Portsmouth City Meeting on Stormwater Solutions and JLU Study Update – March 25, 2025
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Portsmouth City Meeting on Stormwater Solutions and JLU Study Update – March 25, 2025
This meeting focused on the status of a comprehensive study to develop stormwater and flood mitigation solutions for five major corridors in Portsmouth. The presentation provided an overview of the study's progression, the number of proposed solutions, and the timeline tied to an expiring grant.
Discussion Items
- The city is working to finalize design solutions for environmental permitting, final design, and construction. The current grant schedule ends on March 31, 2025, creating urgency as the process began in 2023.
- Approximately 50 different solutions are under consideration, with a total estimated cost of about $750 million.
- The work builds on the 2021 Chesapeake and Portsmouth JLU (Joint Land Use) study, which prioritized five major corridors for further analysis: Effingham Street, George Washington Highway, Portsmouth Boulevard, Frederick Boulevard, and Victory Boulevard.
- The JLU study examined multiple design storms (10-year and 100-year events), sea level rise scenarios (1.5‑foot and 3‑foot increases), and different tailwater/tidal conditions. The current study takes a deeper dive into these corridors.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or decisions were recorded in the transcript; the presentation appears to be informational, setting the stage for upcoming funding and construction decisions.
Meeting Transcript
Design solutions to ultimately be funded for final design, environmental permitting and construction. As Dr. Ron Ronda said, the March 31st is the end of the of the current grant schedule. So we are a little bit up against the the end of the end of the process, uh which we started back in 2023. We've got about 50 different solutions in here that we'll get to, and the total cost of all those solutions coupled together is about 750 million dollars, plus or minus. So it is it is a lot of dollars we're talking about here. Um the JLU study, this is where we were. So back in 2021, the Chesapeake and Portsmouth JLo study was completed and set um set a course to further study five major corridors in Portsmouth here. So Effingham Street, uh George Russian Highway, Portsmouth Boulevard, Frederick Boulevard, and Victory. And looking at multiple different design storms, 10-year design storms, 100-year design storms, multiple different sea level rise, tailwater conditions or tidal conditions, uh 1.5 foot and 3 foot, uh you know, increase in sea level uh rise and tidal outfall elevations. And basically, this study prioritized the five corridors for us, and we just were taking them and and taking a little bit deeper dive into them with this OODCC study. We'll do that. Um so again, this just kind of summarizes we went from JLU.
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