Brownsville has had over three inches of rain just from the weekend alone. A city engineer says city streets have had a history of flooding during torrential storms, but that has changed. The city of Brownsville got soaked this past holiday weekend, but most of the city streets were not badly flooded. A city engineer says the latest drainage projects have played a big factor in keeping streets and neighborhoods as dry as possible.

Brownsville has been working on improving its drainage system for several years. the city has built two retention ponds and has improved street drains. Before the improvements though, Brownsville City Engineer, Carlos Lastra, says streets would get flooded with only two inches of water. We just got over three inches of rain this past weekend and so far he says the system has been doing its job.

“We’ve had pretty heavier rain around these days. It’s worked out the way we intended to work.”

The Public Works Department has also helped. Lastra says the department has kept up with the cleaning of drainage ditches. He says keeping these ditches as clean as possible is allowing the water to drain.

“All the systems have been working properly; working very good we've gotten compliments from some people.”

The new $1 million Retention Pond in the Town-Northe Subdivision off Dana Avenue has so far worked successfully. We visited the subdivision about two months ago. Homeowners there were happy to know their streets would no longer be submerged under water.

The city is continuing to work on its drainage system to ensure there are no heavy floods during storms this summer.