PETERSBURG, Va. -- Water shut down more than six city streets after a downpour of rain Tuesday morning.
Resident Michael Morton said he has to deal with his street flooding regularly, guessing about 15 to 20 times a year.
River Street in Downtown Petersburg floods in several locations, including the area in front of the apartment Morton shares with his wife. The problem is so bad that the first thing they do every day is watch the weather forecast, before looking at the weather apps on their phones.
They move their parked cars across the street at the first sign of a storm, because in the past their cars have been flooded. It sometimes takes 24 hours for the water to recede, Morton said.
Though the city said it prepares ahead of severe weather, the Appomattox River and the old harbor may be the biggest issue when it comes to drainage.
“The Harbor … has not been dredged in many, many years,” said Jerry Byerly of Petersburg Public Works. “So the water level in the harbor is so high that the water, that you see behind me, has nowhere to go until that water goes down.”
Other problems the city faces related to flooding include littering, which gets swept into storm drains, and people driving around detour signs that are put up in key flooding spots.
Byerly said that while dredging the river may not solve all the flooding issues, it will alleviate a lot of problems across the city.
“One of our top priorities we have in our forecast and our plan is to try and get some federal funding to dredge the harbor so the water can actually go somewhere,” Byerly said.
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