Nichols

Nichols

LAURINBURG — Since the end of November, there has been between 23 and 25 inches of rainfall in the area, which has kept city employees hopping to keep roadways, ditches and drains clear. But it’s almost a losing battle.

According to City Manager Charles Nichols, the issues that the city is seeing currently are different from storms such as Hurricane Florence.

“When Matthew and Florence hit, we didn’t have too many issues with the wastewater treatment like we are currently,” Nichols said. “The water table is much higher than normal so we have water seeping into our sewer system, which is creating more for our guys to treat.

“In this situation, you still have to treat everything that comes in even if it is just rainwater, and our guys are treating it as fast as they can.”

Nichols added there are several capital improvement projects that are going on for the city’s infrastructure, both wastewater and stormwater, but the projects will be for the long-term rather than the short-term.

“You can look all over the county, and even the region, everyone is having the same issues we are,” Nichols said. “We’re working with the state but so many other cities and counties are dealing with the same thing because there’s just so much water and nowhere for it to go.”

One of the complaints brought to the Laurinburg City Council on a frequent basis is flooding, which, while the city is currently working on ways to fix it, doesn’t help at the current time.

“Our stormwater system is a mix of city-owned lines, DOT lines and privately owned lines,” Nichols said. “And we’ve done as much as we can to keep them cleared out, but the issues is we’ve had non-stop rain and we haven’t had time for it to dry out … so if you drive around the county you’ll see fields that might never have standing water or didn’t even have standing water during the hurricanes currently have standing water.”

As the forecast is supposed to turn from rain to sun over the weekend, Nichols hopes the area does see a break from the rain to help drain and evaporate some of the water that is sitting in the area. He did add that all the crews from the city have been out working in the rain and facing an uphill battle trying to make sure everything is running as it should.

“Our crews are constantly out there checking on the drains and making sure they’re clear,” Nichols said. “It’s been different this time because it wasn’t a sudden downpour that caused all the pine-straw to clog the drains — they can be clear, but they can only drain so much water at a time and our water table is extremely high right now.”

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