‘Fear of flooding’ seeps into mayor’s race
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
After a summer of sudden thunderstorms and ferocious flooding in parts of Darlington, “fear of flooding” has become an issue in the race for mayor.
Last week, mayoral candidate Curtis Boyd said on his Facebook page that the constant flooding problems were keeping business investments out of the city.
“I was approached … and told by a very large business in town, by their manager, that they have money to expand in Darlington, but with the drainage issue, they WOULD NOT spend money here,” Boyd said on Facebook. He did not name the company.
“I assured him that this is a serious issue that has been let go too long and will be one of our TOP priorities,” Boyd continued. “The businesses and citizens of Darlington have the right to feel secure in their surroundings without fear of flooding every time rain comes to our town.”
The city has been slowly working to deal with flooding problems that date back several decades, but officials say a real fix will cost many millions of dollars. City officials have said they have replaced almost 6,000 feet of pipe and have bought a specialized truck for clearing out storm drains.
But the flooding persists, and some residents say this summer, peppered with severe thunderstorms, has been especially bad.
“The last (storm flood) was one of the worst I’ve seen,” Darlington resident Glenn McRae told WPDE-TV last week. “I thought we were gonna get Noah coming through with the Ark to pick up some animals getting ready for the big one.”
Boyd, a businessman seeking to unseat Mayor Gloria Hines in her bid for a second term, posted photos of flooded streets on his Facebook page July 13 and said: “How many years? All over town. Two hours of rain. This has to be addressed. This has gone on for years. Please be careful out. Already seen five cars towed. Broad St. Russell St. Main St. Pearl St. Please do not drive through it.”
In an interview, Hines said she could not address Boyd’s statement that the city’s drainage problems were squelching business investment in at least one case. “I don’t know of a company that has stated that,” Hines said.
The mayor said that, partly because the ground is still saturated from recent hurricanes and storms that brought flooding throughout the Pee Dee, the Darlington area is simply getting more rain than it can handle.
“We are getting more water than we’ve ever had,” Hines said. “You can’t control God’s water. … We can’t control the rain.”
Another complication, officials have said, is that many drains and ditches around town are clogged with debris, mulch and sometimes junk – leaving stormwater no fast way to drain off. Also, officials have said, the original drainage system used pipes much smaller than what’s needed now.
“I’m not the only mayor that has encountered this,” Hines said. “This is not a problem I created.”
She said she is “the first mayor I know of in the city of Darlington that has ever tackled the stormwater problem,” referring to pipe-replacement work being done on the city’s southwest side.
“We’re trying to do the best we can to relieve that (flooding problem),” Hines said. “But we can’t do it all. It’s not going to be done overnight.”
A third candidate for mayor, City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn Bruce, also said she had no knowledge of the flooding problems keeping any company from expanding in town or coming to town.
“Do we have a flooding issue? Yes,” Bruce said. “We have had flooding issues in the city for years. No one person is going to fix that in four years, eight years or even 12 years.”
Bruce said the current council recognizes the problem, but also sees that it can’t be solved “overnight.”
The filing period for the mayor’s race and open City Council seats begins Aug. 1 and ends Aug. 15.
