As engineers gave updates about projects to fight floodwater at a symposium this week, some citizens pressed local officials to be prepared to keep Port Arthur as dry as possible during the next severe storm.

“What you need to think about is, how much money does the city of Port Arthur spend on drainage?” City Council District 4 candidate Greg Richard said. “Then ask yourself how much does Mid-County spend on its drainage, because that water that flooded us in 2017, a lot of that came from Mid-County. … We need to find out what Mid-County is also doing, because we’re going to be handling their water if the floodwater gets like that.”

Representatives from Arceneaux Wilson & Cole (AWC) and Stuart Consulting Group briefed the public Thursday evening on drainage construction projects during the city-sponsored Drainage and Stormwater Symposium at the Robert A. “Bob” Bowers Civic Center.

The city received federal funds and has called on the engineers to begin designs on construction at Lake Arthur Detention Area, Babe Zaharias Municipal Golf Course, El Vista subdivision and Port Acres subdivision.

Ron Arceneaux of AWC estimates the total cost of the Port Acres project at completion to be $8 million. He said improvements would include upsizing pipes along 63rd through 67th streets, west of West Port Arthur Road.

Plans for El Vista include ditch grading in the area surrounded by 60th Street, Roosevelt Avenue, Maple Avenue and Pine Avenue, with a main outfall culvert replacement on a portion of Maple. Joe Wilson of Stuart Consulting estimates a $3.2 million price tag for this project.

Port Arthur Public Works Director Alberto Elefaño told The News last week the plan for Lake Arthur and Babe Zaharias is to divert some of the floodwaters to detention areas and not flood Drainage District 7 canals.

Port Arthur Community Action Network leader John Beard posed a question of where the water goes when detention ponds fill up. Allen Sims of LJA Engineering said his group, which is working with DD7, is nearing completion of a $62 million pump station at Alligator Bayou. LJA and DD7 have also secured hazard mitigation grants for A3A, Halbouty and Groves detention projects totaling almost $100 million.

“They increased the pumping capacity at that station, and that’s good, but as anybody knows, you’re only as good as the amount of water that’s coming into the pump,” Beard said.

Hilton Kelley, founder of Community In-Power and Development Association in Port Arthur, suggested a bigger problem concerning flooding is climate change.

“Yes, we are resilient people and we can fight, but you can only hold back the oceans for so long,” he said. “Eventually, as long as those ice caps keep melting up in the glaciers and climate change keeps impacting our planet, we need to find a new standard of living with the new normal called water rise.”

Kelley suggested homeowners look into elevating their properties or put berms around them.

District 4 Councilman Harold Doucet said the drainage system is not completely broke but was not designed to handle flooding of big proportions like Hurricane Harvey brought.

“Harvey was for a reason,” he said. “It was to let us know what we had worked in the 1930s and 1940s. … The system that DD7 has wasn’t built for that much runoff. The system the city of Port Arthur has wasn’t built for that much runoff. So, what we have to do is create these detention ponds. They have these new pumps at Alligator Bayou. So, we’re doing things to create in line a better system so that water can run off.”