Brentwood project didn’t stop flooding but made it less severe, some say

BRENTWOOD — This month's deadly flash flooding produced one question repeated around Brentwood: Did the city's newly completed, $80 million flood project effectively help reduce the severity of the area's latest brush with high water?

While viewpoints differed from place to place, perhaps no one was more grateful for the project, called Brentwood Bound, than those at the Fischer Window and Door Store. Though at least one company truck was ruined by the Nov. 5 flash flood, it could have been much worse. Water crept right up to the edge of the company's loading dock but didn't spill onto the floors of the business, as it has before.

The city's recent mitigation work likely helped make that crucial difference, said Steve Marlo, a salesperson.

"It definitely did help," said Marlo, adding that it "didn't eliminate" flood risk there, but "it's reduced it, significantly."

The heavy rain and runoff, which caused widespread flooding in the region earlier this month, saw streams like Deer Creek and Black Creek jump their banks, flooding roads and closing major arteries such as Hanley Road and Manchester Road. Some parks, homes and businesses were inundated, including the Trainwreck Saloon, near Deer Creek in neighboring Rock Hill.

But around Brentwood's busy Manchester corridor, many say they dodged a bullet — and some credit Brentwood Bound. A range of owners and employees say they avoided getting flooded, even though the water came frighteningly close in some cases. Where water made it inside, owners say it wasn't as bad as in the past.

Billed by the city as a "solution to overcome flooding and public safety challenges" along Deer Creek and Manchester, Brentwood Bound includes the creation of a new, 32-acre park next to the creek that is "designed to contain water as the natural floodplain would." And in areas on either side of the park, recent years have featured the removal of buildings from both Deer Creek's floodplain and floodway — where floodwaters go — helping to make more space for high water to sprawl, with fewer properties in harm's way.

"It's a system that invites the water and holds it in a place that's not a danger to anybody," Alderman David Plufka said.

In the immediate aftermath of the flood, no thorough, scientific assessments of the Brentwood Bound project's performance are available. But it appeared that it worked as designed, local officials said.

"The creek has performed beautifully," said Mayor David Dimmitt, adding that, next to the Brentwood Bound project, the waterway has handled heavy rain events without igniting flood problems that "absolutely" would have occurred in its absence, as recently as a few years ago.

Some others agree that it has helped move the needle in that spot, including the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.

"It's something that we believe will make things better," said Sean Stone, an MSD spokesman. "I really commend them on what they're doing."

Still, not everyone in the area escaped trouble — leaving some feeling skeptical or underwhelmed about the project's effectiveness.

This month's floodwater came "too close for comfort" to the offices of Millennium Productions, an event planning company on Brentwood Industrial Drive, next to the downstream side of the Brentwood Bound project. The water didn't get inside its building but reached up to the axle of a truck outside, said Tony Volkman, the company's president.

"Any time it rains, this instantly becomes a lake," Volkman said, describing the neighboring floodplain area. "We jokingly call it 'Lake Millennium.'"

At Wild Nails, a "couple inches or so" of water got into the salon — but it came from the overwhelmed sewer along Manchester, not from Deer Creek. It was the fifth time the business has flooded since moving into the space in 2013 — enough to take a toll on owner Jason Le, whenever significant rain is in the forecast.

"I do not sleep well any time I look at the weather and it says that it's raining," he said. "I'll stay up all night, at home."

He thought, and hoped, the Brentwood Bound project might bring an end to the cycle.

"They say they hoped they were going to get the flooding issues resolved, but it's still going on," Le said.

Not far upstream from the Manchester corridor, Jennifer Lohman's home on East Pacific Avenue, along the northern edge of Webster Groves, was hit by flooding — a "distressing" event, she said, given the project's completion nearby.

"I had hoped Brentwood Bound would help more than that," said Lohman, adding that she even made new investments in her home after hearing about the project.

Brentwood Bound, though, is only intended to help with flood issues in and along its immediate footprint, bounded roughly by Dorothy Avenue on its western side and Hanley Road to the east, and is not meant to have a halo effect that addresses flood problems across a wider radius, Dimmitt said.

Furthermore, officials said that urban flood projects of that scale can only do so much in the face of such significant rainfall, like the amounts that struck the region early this month.

Areas along Deer Creek have lengthy histories of flooding, with problems stretching back a half-century, Dimmitt said. But local residents victimized by repeated bouts of high water say those issues have gotten worse in recent years, especially since flooding caused by remnants of Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Broader trends also speak to rising flood risks. Major downpours are becoming more common, aided by a warming climate that enables the atmosphere to hold more moisture, while prevailing development trends exacerbate runoff that can quickly overwhelm waterways.

"When you have all that impervious surface and you have all that rain ... that water has to go somewhere," Dimmitt said.

With work on Brentwood Bound complete, the city said it has no plans for additional flood projects.

"We did a lot. There's really nothing on the horizon for us," Dimmitt said.

And he feels comfortable with the current level of flood protection, he said, given how the Brentwood Bound area has fared in recent floods — including during an episode of record rainfall in 2022, when it was only partially built.

"It has passed that test every single time, even at 70% completion," he said. "I'm confident that we're going to be fine."

For some, though, the latest episode of flooding reinforces some longstanding critiques of local approaches to flood policy. Some area residents and repeat flood victims, for instance, say that, even though municipalities like Brentwood have invested heavily in combating some localized flood issues, a broader, coordinated effort is missing throughout the Deer Creek watershed and across the St. Louis region.

"There should be one authority," said Lohman, adding that the area's fragmentation "causes all kinds of problems."

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