While over nine inches of rain brought some flooding to Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the area got through Hurricane Florence with considerably less damage than parts of eastern North Carolina.

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle said part of the credit for this goes to the town’s public works department.

“Even in advance of the storm, I know [public works] went around to many of our areas where we knew that floodwaters would be rushing,” Lavelle said in an interview after the storm. “They went in and cleared out debris so they could work.”

Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said that public works teams were prepping and clearing areas for floodwaters to go two weeks prior to the storm, but the sheer volume of rain on top of topographical challenges were too much to handle.

Both mayors said that improving stormwater retention has been and will remain a priority.

“We have got to come up with some better solutions for folks,” said Hemminger. “We’ve been working really hard on stormwater; it’s been a top priority.”

A new stormwater retention pond behind Eastgate Crossing is currently in the works, which Hemminger said she hopes will be completed before the next hurricane.

“We’ve learned a lot; we’re implementing a lot, and we’re trying to make a real difference so that we don’t have this continue to happen because we all firmly believe that climate change is real. And we’re going to continue to have extreme weather events like this one.”

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