Storm Control & Drainage

Slane Canyon project near Bloomfield, N.M., drainage design to control storm run-off, 2002. Client: N.M. Department of Transportation (NMDoT).

For decades, residents in central Albuquerque were told their homes were built in a flood plain. Homeowners would take a squinty view of flood plain maps and cock their heads? You sure?

Enter storm control/drainage professionals at Smith Engineering Company. Months of study and calculations revealed that, actually, many residents did not live in the flood plain. Our engineers submitted design documents to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that demonstrated previous definitions of the local flood plain were very inaccurate and that the majority of residents were not in a floodplain.

Result?

Some 2,000 residents should be ruled out imminent danger from flooding, saving $2 million a year in homeowners insurance premiums. This revision is pending approval by FEMA at this time.

Less dramatic, but no less effective, Smith engineers in y2000 designed an improved energy dissipation and erosion control structure in Slane Canyon near Bloomfield that protected U.S. Highway 64. Local contractors, using our design, built the structure that stabilizes the 30 foot high roadway embankment and ensures traffic and commerce patterns in northwestern New Mexico.

“It’s rare to see analysis this comprehensive,” Rio Rancho City Engineer Randall Carroll said after Smith Engineering designed the community’s Industrial Park drainage management plan.

So it goes with the Smith Engineering drainage group.

Our professionals protect lives and property by knowing in advance where arroyos / streams will flow. Our professionals are especially effective when designing hydraulic improvements associated with runoff from rain events. Through storm sewers, open channels, dams, retention ponds and other erosion control structures, our professionals enhance the quality of life in the Southwest.

For years, we have been one of the City of Albuquerque’s and the Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority’s (AMAFCA) engineering firm of choice. But Smith Engineering serves drainage/storm control clients large and small.

Does your community need design services that will put water in places where you want it, and keep water out of where you don’t? Have a developer who’s building a new residential development?

Give one of the five Smith Engineering offices a call … before the next storm.