Hendersonville Unveils Mud Creek Greenspace: 27-Acre Floodplain Project Tackles Generational South Side Flooding, Benefiting 75 Commercial Buildings and 18 Homes
Hendersonville, Henderson County, North Carolina — The city held a ribbon-cutting on October 30 for the Mud Creek greenspace, completing one of the largest flood mitigation projects in the city's history.
The South Side area along Mud Creek is a broad, flat valley where as little as three to four inches of rain has flooded surrounding roads for generations. Starting last year, the city removed the berms along the creek and dug a new, meandering channel farther from buildings through a 27-acre parcel of city land south of downtown, building trails and replanting native species.
Now, when the creek rises it can overflow into the greenspace instead of roads and buildings, and automatic flood gates in the greenspace open and close with water depth to hold some floodwater back. Stormwater Director Michael Huffman said at the ceremony that South Side flooding is not a new problem and Mud Creek has flooded the area for generations. State Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson noted that just two or three weeks ago the area got half a foot of rain in a day, the most since Hurricane Helene.
The project was funded by $1.9 million from the Division of Water Infrastructure, $704,000 from the Flood Resiliency Blueprint and $250,000 from the Water Resources Development Grant Program. Within the project area, 75 commercial buildings and 18 residential properties face medium-to-high flood risk, worth a combined $62 million, and the greenspace will also filter stormwater across 400 acres of developed watershed. Last month the city bought another 22 acres along Mud Creek for a planned second phase of floodplain restoration.
Source: GSM America
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA。来源：Wikimedia Commons（Quintin Soloviev，CC BY 4.0）
