Sullivan’s Island receives $300,000 grant to rebuild stormwater infrastructure

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND, S.C. (WCBD) – Sullivan’s Island town council voted Tuesday night to approve a new grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for flood mitigation on the island.

Sullivan’s Island has faced years of flooding from hurricanes and king tides. This FEMA grant will provide residents with some flooding relief by rebuilding stormwater infrastructure at Station 18 1/2, Station 25, and surrounding areas.

“Over the year our residents have been dealing with a failing stormwater system, a lot of the pipe sizes can’t handle the capacity for rain events we experience here on the island so these grant funds will go to do a lot of these improvements,” said Joe Henderson, the Sullivan’s Island Town Administrator.

The grant will be used to install devices that prevent backwashing of flood waters and drain badly flooded basins throughout the island, as well as reconstruct ditches that filter into the drainage basin, replace concrete piping and improve the functionality of the stormwater system

This is not the first grant Sullivan’s Island has received.

“This most recent FEMA grant is going to be the 7th we’ve received over the past three or so years totaling around 17 million dollars so it’s just another piece of the puzzle to fix what we deal with on Sullivans island,” said Henderson.

Henderson says the town plans to move quickly with the grant.

“The next step is procuring an engineering firm, once we receive a list of qualified proposals from engineers, we’ll choose an engineering firm and then move a qualified construction company to actually build the infrastructure,” he said.

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