City to seek $146.3M federal grant

It's a drainage project, a highway project, a Homeland Security plan, a job-creation initiative and a community-building exercise, all wrapped into one bold feat of engineering. And it can be yours for just $146 million.

That's essentially Charleston's pitch to the federal government for the money needed to address flooding problems that have vexed downtown residents for about as long as there's been a downtown.

By Tuesday, the city will submit a federal grant application for $146.3 million in stimulus funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

If Charleston is successful, the money will buy a drainage system for a 500-acre section of the peninsula where heavy rains at high tide often flood the Septima Clark Expressway and neighborhood streets, frequently damaging homes and property. The money also would pay for improvements to the expressway aimed at beautifying the main artery across town and improving safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The money needed for the job is roughly equal to the city's entire annual budget, an amount far beyond the city's normal means.

Of course, Charleston won't be alone in applying for federal grant money. There's $1.5 billion in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant money, and the city is requesting nearly 10 percent of the amount available nationwide.

Mayor Joe Riley seems confident of the city's chances, however; and the City Council has gone along, agreeing to spend millions on engineering, permitting, environmental studies, grant preparation and other work aimed at having a "shovel-ready" project to present to the federal government.

If the grant is approved this winter, the city could be ready to solicit bids for the work.

"We believe there would be over 3,000 jobs created," Riley told City Council members Tuesday night, as they considered authorizing the latest $1.6 million of the $7.4 million in engineering contracts.

The project is costly because it involves creating a system of huge shafts and tunnels, 12 feet in diameter and 130 feet below ground, linked to a trio of massive pumps that could send 361,000 gallons of water per minute into the Ashley River.

The area those pumps would drain covers about 20 percent of the Charleston peninsula, roughly from the Ashley River to King Street, and from Hampton Park to the Medical University of South Carolina.

Riley said he believes the grant will be competitive because the problems the project aims to fix are so widespread. The flooding in the area blocks the only federal highway across the peninsula, which is a key hurricane evacuation route and also the route to both the Veterans Affairs hospital and MUSC, which is South Carolina's only Level One Trauma Center.

There's also the job-creation element, which is an important goal of the federal grant money, and the hope that the highway improvements will help reconnect parts of the West Side that were split apart when the highway was created.

"The stimulus effect of that (grant money) in our community would be huge," Riley said.

The grant applications are due Tuesday, and the city expects to get an answer some time between November and January.

Reach David Slade at 937-5552 or dslade@postandcourier.com.