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EDINBURG — “This is a transformational investment,” U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Brownsville, told a gaggle of press here on Friday about a historic federal investment in infrastructure projects.
With bipartisan support, in 2021, the U.S. Congress approved a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill meant to address roads, bridges, ports of entry and other critical transportation and utility infrastructure across the country.
And some of those federal dollars have since begun making their way to the Rio Grande Valley, where local officials have long fought to improve outdated drainage infrastructure.
It was one such project that brought Gonzalez to Edinburg on Friday, amid a brief congressional recess.
The congressman was all smiles as he and Hidalgo County leaders celebrated the funding win by breaking ground on a $3.7 million project to widen an approximately 3.5-mile-long section of the North Main Drain.
The funding came as part of the Fiscal Year 2022 Government Spending Bill, according to a news release from Gonzalez’s office.
The Main Drain system, which is divided into north and south sections, is a critical part of the Rio Grande Valley’s overall flood and rainwater drainage system.
Across the Valley, the elevation dips from east to west at a rate of approximately one inch per mile. In the hundred miles between the bluffs of Starr County and the shores of the Laguna Madre, the average elevation change is only a few feet.
That uniform flatness makes it difficult for stormwater to drain, particularly during severe weather events.
From 2015 through the summer of 2020, when Hurricane Hanna struck Port Mansfield, the Valley has seen nearly half a dozen historic rain events that have wrought hundreds of millions of dollars in flood damage.
As a result, residents and officials both soon learned just how out of date and over capacity the region’s drainage systems were.
Since then, county leaders, working in conjunction with state and federal officials, have worked hard to fund a laundry list of projects to address the issue.
Hidalgo County alone has passed $375 million over the course of two bond elections to fund nearly five dozen individual projects.
High on the priority list are expansions of the Main Drain system, which runs through Edinburg in Precinct 4, then north through the Delta cities of Precinct 1, before continuing on through Willacy County toward the bay.
However, it’s been the county’s ability to leverage those local dollars with state and federal money pots that has allowed them to stretch project funding even further.
“Local, state and federal partnerships are key in improving communities,” Hidalgo County Precinct 4 Commissioner Ellie Torres told the crowd who had gathered for Friday’s groundbreaking.
“This project is going to be a major improvement in our drainage system that pretty much is outdated, that is a little too small for the size of our county,” she added.
The expansion will run from Canton Road near the McColl Road intersection, north to Mile 17 1/2 Road. Torres likened it to expanding the existing canal from a “two-lane water highway to a six-lane water highway.”
As the celebration continued, Gonzalez had his eyes on what’s next.
“We have projects planned in Harlingen, in Combes, in eastern Hidalgo County throughout my district,” he said.
