Norfolk residents waiting for major relief from flooded underpasses and waterlogged streets will likely have to wait until at least 2028 for key upgrades to take shape.
The multi-year wait comes as city leaders unanimously approved a $1.5 million agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday to study coastal storm risk protections for Southside communities, including Berkley, Campostella, Campostella Heights, Diggs Town and Oakwood.
This ties into the massive planned Coastal Storm Risk Management projects already set to try to insulate Norfolk's downtown and adjacent areas along the Elizabeth River. Sitework for the first phase of that floodwall effort is underway and set to start construction next year.
Meanwhile, residents have demanded faster action at City Council after three heavy rainstorms on Aug. 4, Aug. 22, and Nov. 6 stranded cars and flooded roadways. Norfolk’s after-action report following the Aug. 4 storm and the city’s approved capital improvement budget show that immediate fixes for the stormwater system are limited and that major upgrades to keep roads open are still years away.
On Aug. 4, just over six inches of rain fell near Ghent. The Colley Avenue, Monticello Avenue and Virginia Beach Boulevard underpasses all flooded, while about two feet of water also pooled at Tidewater Drive and Wall Street. Norfolk’s Public Works staff said they could not recall all three major underpasses flooding at once in at least 23 years, according to the after-action report.
An email from Norfolk’s communications department said current underpass pump upgrades focus on replacing old equipment to keep systems mechanically reliable within their existing limits, not on preparing for stronger storms or future sea level rise.
These equipment upgrades won't be online any time soon. At Colley Avenue, an email from Norfolk’s communications department noted a $1.63 million plan would replace old pumps, move electrical equipment out of the underpass and into the generator building, and widen street drains. Funding for this project is proposed for the city’s 2028 budget. The city’s after-action report on the Aug. 4 storm said no single issue caused the flooding, but a faulty valve made one pump lose suction until crews restarted it about an hour later.
At Virginia Beach Boulevard, the pump station is built for severe storms, but the drainage pond it uses can overflow and back up toward the underpass. An email from Norfolk’s communications department said a second pond was approved in 2021, but funding is not proposed until the 2028 or 2029 budget, depending on community outreach and work with the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
At Tidewater Drive and Wall Street, final designs are underway to upgrade the station’s electrical parts. An email from Norfolk’s communications department said the station can handle routine heavy rainstorms, rated between a two-year and five-year event, when all three pumps work. However, the after-action report’s numbers put the station’s capacity below the estimated inflow from a two-year storm, and water still reached the street during the August downpour with all three pumps running.
At Monticello Avenue, major upgrades are not scheduled in Norfolk’s five-year budget. The after-action report said dirt and debris build up inside the underground holding chamber slows down the station.
To clear debris and keep equipment working, Norfolk started a citywide cleaning program for its underground pump chambers in January. Five stations have been cleaned and the city is arranging a contractor to clean Hampton Boulevard’s chamber, which it expects to finish by the end of the year. The after-action report said the station there kept water 4.4 feet below the road during the August storm while running two of its three pumps, and credited a 1994 rebuild that added capacity and storage. City logs show it hasn't had to run it's third pump since May 22, 2026.
Norfolk is also building the St. Paul’s Blue-Greenway, replacing about 1,200 feet of buried concrete drainage tunnels with an open waterway and wetlands to catch runoff from 330 acres in the Newton’s Creek watershed. The project, part of the redevelopment of public housing there, is funded by state, federal and city money and is expected to be finished in late 2028.
Even as Norfolk plans pump upgrades, local advocates say the city’s drainage pipes were never designed for the storms happening in Hampton Roads today. Ian Blair, policy program director at Wetlands Watch, said Norfolk’s drainage systems were built on now-outdated rainfall data and standard neighborhood pipes are made for smaller, more frequent storms, not massive downpours, because building every pipe for extreme weather would be too expensive for the city.
“We’re unfortunately still using 2000-era precipitation values. When we build our storm pipes, we’re anticipating storms from the 1970s, from the 1950s. We’re not anticipating 2020-era storms,” Blair said.
He noted regional data showed an 18% increase in how hard, how often and how long it rained in Virginia. During the most recent major storm on Nov. 6, Blair tracked a local rain gauge that reached extreme storm intensity within its first 35 minutes.
To make things tougher on Norfolk’s systems, heavy rain often happens during high tides. During the Aug. 4 storm, a high tide peaking at 3.19 feet made it harder for the system to drain water, according to the city.
Blair said stormwater planners and coastal surge planners often work separately and miss how neighborhood rainfall and bay tides interact during storms, which he believes future planning should address. The agreement describes the new study as looking at coastal storm risk measures for Southside and does not mention local stormwater drainage, which is what flooded the underpasses on Aug. 4.
“The water has no place to go except on the street and the pools and the intersections and in the underpasses,” he said.
