EDINBURG — Hidalgo County Commissioner Precinct 4 Ellie Torres on Thursday morning hosted a groundbreaking ceremony here for a new project to expand the existing South Main Drain.
Dignitaries from the county, the cities of Edinburg and McAllen gathered at the site of the South Main Drain off of McColl Road near the intersection with Canton Road.
The South Main Drain is located in a critical area between southwest Edinburg and northeast McAllen, and stretches for approximately 5.6 miles east.
“We’re having our groundbreaking for a very exciting project,” Torres said after the ceremony. “We’re going to be expanding our South Main Drain. In some areas it’s going to double and in some areas it’s going to triple its size and its capacity.”
Torres said that urbanization to the area has resulted in the county outgrowing the drain, which was designed and constructed in the 1980s. The planned expansion will help mitigate water away from surrounding businesses and homes as the area continues to develop.
The project is being funded by carry-over money from the $190 million 2018 Drainage Bond Program, which funded 38 projects throughout the four county precincts. She said that the project will not have any additional costs to county taxpayers.
The county also applied for a $10 million FEMA grant to help fund the project.
“We’re using in-house forces. We’re not contracting out,” Torres said. “We’re not hiring an outside company to come in and do the digging and that kind of stuff. We’re using our engineering department from the drainage district to design the expansion — which has already been designed — and then we’re going to use drainage district operators to dig it up and our own Precinct 4 truck drivers to haul away the dirt.”
Torres compared the expansion project to a two-lane road expanding to a four-lane road. She said that the county will be able begin work on the project immediately because the county owns the right of way.
Raul E. Sesin, general manager of the Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1, explained that the project will be completed in two phases, the first of which is expected to take up to a year to complete.
“The current width of the ditch averages around 60- to 80-feet top width right now,” Sesin said. “It’s going to go up to almost 220 — about 110 to 220. It’s going to be much wider. Not only is it a volume-creating project, but it’s also a maintenance project because it allows our equipment to shred the sides without having to come in with heavy, bulky equipment to do it. When we have these types of bench systems, it’s easier to maintain.”
“It’s a kind of dual-purpose project,” Sesin continued. “Obviously, primarily we want to get the water out of the surrounding developments and into this system as quickly as possible, convey it east so that ultimately it flows into the Laguna Madre. At the same time, we’re looking at the long-term effects of maintenance on it.”
Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez thanked taxpayers for approving the 2018 Drainage Bond Program, which made this project possible.
“This project is very important because it’s going to double and quadruple the flow of water out of this area,” Cortez said. “This is a very critical area. We have the University (of Texas Rio Grande Valley), we have the hospital, a lot of commercial areas, so this outflow is going to be tremendous. This is why we want to thank the taxpayers for giving us the $190 million to be able to do this.”
