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Photo by Sarah Owens
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell presented the city of Homewood with a $1 million check for water drainage improvements on Oct. 15, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens
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Photo by Sarah Owens
From left: Carlos Alemán, Barry Smith, Patrick McClusky, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, Alex Wyatt, Melanie Beer, John Hardin and Jennifer Andress. Sewell presented the city of Homewood with a $1 million check for water drainage improvements on Oct. 15, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (AL-07) presented the city of Homewood with $1 million on Tuesday that she secured for water drainage improvements.
The funding will be used to install a stormwater culvert at Griffin Creek along Huntington Road, addressing long-time stormwater drainage and flooding issues in the area.
"This project will replace decades old infrastructure and relieve the current bottleneck that has led to significant flooding on several private properties," said Sewell. "We in Alabama are no stranger to severe weather. When disaster strikes, it is essential that our communities have the infrastructure needed to mitigate flooding and recover quickly."
Addressing Homewood's flooding and stormwater issues is a platform that Mayor Patrick McClusky ran on back in 2020, but he notes it's one that has been a topic of priority for the city long before that.
"These projects have been top of mind for several years, even back before my term as mayor while I was on the city council," he said. "These stormwater infrastructure issues are just a part of dealing with old infrastructure. A lot of pipes that are underneath our feet are from the 1920s and were not built big enough at the time, and some have led. So this was a project that we had earmarked two years ago."
Unable to secure the funding for this larger project until now, the city has put a lot of their own money into smaller stormwater projects in other parts of Homewood. The funding announced on Tuesday is part of a $13.1 million FY 2024 funding source for all of the community projects in Alabama's 7th Congressional District.
"I'm proud to be a part of an effort to really improve our old infrastructure," said Sewell. "I was proud to vote in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year, and in that bill, we provide over $300 million to the state of Alabama over the next five years for infrastructure."
As part of that bill, Sewell and the city have requested an additional $1.3 million for the 2025 budget to be put towards this culvert project.
Now that the city has the funds to begin the project, McClusky said they will look to bid out the work as soon as possible. Once a contractor is signed, the city will have an idea of when construction will begin and how long the project may take. The total cost of the project is estimated to be around $1.8 million.
