After years of working, waiting and worrying, the city of Orange will be lining more of Cooper’s Gully with concrete. The city council Tuesday voted to award a contract for $2.85 million of work. The money is coming from a federal Hurricane Ike recovery grant. The storm came 10 years ago in September.
Public Works Director Jim Wolf has worked in recent years to get environmental approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which originally rejected the plan.
Cooper’s Gully is a natural drainage waterway that has been widened and deepened through the years. It drains much of the city east of 16th Street and south of Interstate 10. The gully drains into the Sabine River by the Boat Ramp. The city has a major pump station where the gully goes into the river.
Parts of the gully have a concrete liner. City officials have wanted the concrete liner to alleviate mowing and maintenance. The concrete is supposed to help the flow of water.
Previous bids to finish all the gully were too expensive. The $2.85 million bid is going to Excavation and Construction LLC of Port Arthur, the lowest of three bids. Wolf told the council the money will pay for another 6,000 linear feet of the gully. He’s hoping the concrete liner will go from the area by the Boat Ramp into Navy Park.
He said he hopes the gully can be lined all the way to 20th Street.
The council also approved a change in the city’s 2017 Action Plan for spending federal Community Development Block Grant money. Grants Planner Sandra Wilson said $109,517 had been allocated to build sidewalks in the Cove neighborhood. However, the targeted streets are in the 100 year flood zone and federal money cannot be spent there.
She suggested the council move the budgeted money to demolitions. After Tropical Storm Harvey, the city will have more dilapidated houses that will need to be taken down, she said.
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