The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

The Maplecrest Addition outside of Vidor is notorious for flooding during a soaking rain. The Orange County Drainage District may have a remedy to the flooding, however.

The district is proposing to build two 100-acre detention ponds on FM 1135 for Terry Gully which ties into Cow Bayou, according to General Manager Mark Stephenson.

Tiger Creek and 10-Mile Creek will have some proposed detention systems in the future as a result of a drainage study.

He said the goal is to get that water back into the channel. “This has been needing to be done in Orange County for many, many years,” he said. The detention ponds will be modeled after the 32-acre Lawrence Road detention pond off of FM 1442. The district has already purchased the FM 1135 properties, completed studies and applied for grants to the Texas Water Development Board. Stephenson hopes construction will begin by the Fall and it will be a long-term project. “Very preliminary” projects are building another detention pond on Cow Bayou, one north of Interstate 10 and one for Adams Bayou in Orange in the future.

The detention ponds on FM 1135 are based on a 10-year flood plan while the other projects are based on a 100-year flood plan. In fact, a master plan study for the entire county waterways is currently underway. The study will help “deal with real, practical solutions to flooding in Orange County,” Stephenson said. He added it's cost prohibitive to keep cleaning natural streams compared to building detention ponds. “It's another way of detaining water. It's the most effective manner,” he said.

As with the Lawrence Road detention pond, Carroll and Blackman will be the engineering designing firm. Lawrence Road began after Hurricane Ike though the study was completed in 2002. It is 85 percent completed and former Precinct 3 Commissioner John Dubose was instrumental in getting the detention pond built, Stephenson said. “The hurricanes opened our eyes. Nature can get your attention,” he said.