Like many folks in Huntington, IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ve been watching the flooding in the Enslow area with growing concern. What used to be a rare event now seems like a seasonal certainty. As climate change accelerates, the water keeps rising and Fourpole Creek canÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t keep up.
In recent years, IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ve heard more and more people mention ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œatmospheric rivers.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ At first, I thought it was just a West Coast issue. Turns out itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s not. These long, powerful streams of moisture are now reaching the East Coast, too, dumping heavy rainfall on areas like ours and making an already tough situation even harder. And similar flooding patterns are showing up all across the country and more recently in West Virginia. Gilbert in Mingo County has had two major floods in one month.
Locally, a number of ideas have been floated to solve whatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s becoming known as the Fourpole problem:
Dredging the creek to deepen and widen the channel, allowing more water to move through faster
Constructing a series of retention or detention ponds upstream to temporarily hold back stormwater during heavy rains
Reinforcing and upgrading existing culverts and drainage systems to keep stormwater moving
Raising roads and building levees in key low-lying areas to divert or block rising water
These are all valid strategies, and theyÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ve all been studied to varying degrees. The problem is that most of them come with high costs and complicated implementation plans. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s hard to know which one might actually work best, and harder still to imagine how the funding would come together.
ThatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s where my curiosity kicks in. What if we looked at this from a different angle?
HereÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s one off-the-wall idea IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™d like to put on the table: Make the road from the Hal Greer Boulevard intersection to Ritter Park a one-way street heading into Huntington, and reroute outgoing traffic using one of the existing avenues, Then remove the other half of the road to create more space for Fourpole Creek. With the extra room, the creek could be widened and dredged deeper at the same time to better manage floodwaters. Of course, that would require reinforcing the bank with concrete or stone to prevent erosion, but thatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s where the Army Corps of Engineers could come in. They could run the numbers and tell us whether itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s feasible and if it might be more affordable than other options already under consideration and above all whether it would work.
Is it unconventional? Yes indeed, and it will spark debate. But sometimes, itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s the outside-the-box ideas that end up working best, especially in communities like ours, where the problems are real, the resources are limited, and the time to act is running out.
This isnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t about pushing a perfect plan. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s about staying curious, being open, and exploring all options ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” even the off-the-wall ones.
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