Stormwater Utility Capital Improvement Program

• Lake Preservation projects are done to prevent downstream damages due to failure during a flood, to reduce flooding to roads and buildings, and improve water quality. These projects involve either public or private lakes.
• Storm Drainage System projects are done to prevent downstream damages due to failure during a flood, to reduce flooding to roads and buildings, and improve water quality. These projects are normally associated with City streets.
• Stream Enhancement and Green projects are done to reduce water quality impacts by reducing sediment and other pollutants in stormwater. These projects are normally associated with City property such as parks or fire stations.
• Storm Drainage (SD) and Water Quality (WQ) petition projects are on private property and (SD) reduce flooding to homes and businesses, repair eroded streams, and (both SD and WQ) improve water quality.
• Bridge Rehabilitation projects are done for public safety. Closures are necessary until structures are safely rehabilitated.

View our current project studies

Walnut Creek Watershed Master Planning | Future Conditions Floodplain Mapping

The City of Raleigh Stormwater Utility has completed 125 projects at a cost of $31,000,000 since 2004.

The purpose of these projects is to reduce flooding on City streets and in homes and businesses; improve water quality and complete watershed studies to identify existing and potential future problems in the drainage system.

These projects will help us reduce the costs of future floods by reducing damages because of these floods. Costly future projects, to repair streets, rebuild homes and businesses, repair washed out streams can be reduced or prevented. Projects to reduce street flooding also helps us to more easily navigate our neighborhood streets and allows for more and quicker evacuation routes during major disasters.

In addition to our obligation to protect our environment by improving water quality in our streams and rivers, the federal Clean Water Act regulations require us to improve water quality. Projects to improve water quality today will be less costly to implement because of less dense development and lower construction costs versus future costs.

A project is selected based on the issues listed and generally in the following order:

• City street or private property
• Public safety including City street or lake failure or the potential of
• Is the project mandated by a regulatory agency such as under the State Dam Safety or the Clean Water Act?
• Flooding to homes or businesses
• Water quality improvement
• Stream bank erosion

Note Stormwater Utility staff prepares the program annually, but City Council ultimately approves which projects are implemented. Also, projects are only funded in the 1st year of the CIP as part of the annual budget process. Projects in years 2-10 along with any newly identified projects will be prioritized again during the next annual CIP review.

Goals

• To reduce the number of backlogged projects by implementing $100,000,000 worth of improvements by 2021
• To provide a 10-year storm level of protection for all City streets and flooding in the finished floor areas of all homes and businesses in the next 25 years, where a project is feasible and economically possible.
• To remove at least 50% of the streams from the State of North Carolina's list of impaired streams in the next 25 years

Contact Stormwater Utility at 919-996-3940 or email