Good afternoon, everyone.

The Clayson County Board of Commissioners Work Session is now called to order.

The date is December 9th, 2025 in the time it's 5 30 p.m.

We will do roll call, District 1, District 2.

District 2.

It's present.

All right, and district 3 and District 4.

All right, we're gonna move on forward.

Do any of the commissioners of Commissioner Hamburg, do you have any items for the upcoming VOC regular uh business meeting that you would like to discuss in the preliminary agenda tonight?

No, have not reviewed it.

All right.

Well, and so we will move right along to our work session.

Um our first work session item for tonight is going to be for this afternoon is going to be the going to be the Flint River Flood Mitigation Project, and that will be from Director Vasquez.

Please come forward.

There you go.

Good evening, madam chair.

Good evening, Commissioner Hambrick.

And uh citizens in attendance.

Uh we are presenting tonight and uh happy to present the um first public meeting for the uh Clayton County Upper Riverdale um Upper Flint River uh flood mitigation phase project.

Um so just a little bit of history.

Last year we were awarded um 24.4 million dollars um for fixing the flint, as you know historically, any time that it rains more than just a few hours in the county um it floods Upper Riverdale Road.

So we uh we're awarded the hazard mitigation grant.

We are in phase one right now, which Lee and his team are uh conducting.

It is the engineering study, and um part of the grant is to have a public meeting, so that is the meeting that we're having tonight to present to you what we have been doing so far and to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

And at that point, I'm gonna present Mr.

Lee Walton with WSB.

All right.

And Mr.

Walton, I just want to um let everyone know, the citizens know that uh Commissioner Reeves is attending this meeting virtually.

So Commissioner Reeves, um, as we go through, um, if you have any questions once we get through, Mr.

Walton gets through from WSP, we will answer those questions as well as the other board members.

Thank you for coming out tonight, sir.

Thank you.

I'm glad to be here.

W SP WSP, yes, ma'am.

It can get a little confusing around here.

They didn't think about that when they uh okay.

Good evening, um Madam Chair, Commissioners and uh members of the public.

We're glad to be here uh this evening.

We're um I I say we're at the start of the process.

We've actually done a good bit of uh surveying and analysis so far, so accurate to say we're in the early stages of the process, but this is the first good opportunity for us to uh come brief you on what we've done so far and where we're headed.

Um so I'm expeditiously going to go through uh this agenda, just an overview of what this project is all about, talking a little bit about the modeling and data analysis effort that we're currently involved in.

I've got a similar project example just to cast a vision of um of where we might be headed, a project from another community, and then uh we will welcome any public comments and questions that might come up uh today.

Um as Director Vasquez uh indicated, Clayton was awarded hazard mitigation grant funds.

That's called the HMGP program out of uh which is managed by GEMA.

Um it's FEMA funds that flow into the state, but the state uh controls those funds and uh and some time ago they reviewed information um about this need and potential project and decided it was worthy of of funding, and so they've uh awarded the grant funds as Director Vasquez mentioned.

And the purpose is for flood mitigation, and it's tied to previous flood events that have occurred near Southern Regional Medical Center or uh Upper Riverdale Road adjacent to, and there's several factors involved there when it floods, when the road floods, then emergency vehicles can't easily you know access across the Flint River County east to west and to the hospital and so forth.

So it impacts lifelines in the terminology of the uh emergency manager.

So that's one of many factors.

Um we were brought on board to handle the surveying analysis, modeling, engineering design for the project, um, and we're working this under the Office of Resilience and Sustainability.

The primary goal overall is to identify and design flood mitigation solutions for this part of the Upper Flint River that are nature-based and feasible.

And I'll talk a little bit more about nature-based in the future.

We're also, as per tonight, uh engaging in community involvement and stakeholder involvement through the process, which is running terrible parallel to the technical process.

The flow charts that show on the slide here before you are showing how that parallel community and stakeholder involvement process and technical analysis process are flowing as we go along.

And then the community, we're we're welcoming any comments tonight, and the community will have input on the final project design before it goes into that phase two for implementation that Director Vasquez mentioned.

Probably not very many of us have been down in the Flint River.

I just had the opportunity for the first time recently when the airport actually sponsored a cleanup event, uh sort of an Earth Day type cleanup event down in the Flint River on their property.

And it's pretty remarkable when you get down in some portions of the river corridor, you almost feel like you're in a North Georgia stream.

Other areas, not the same.