The City of Aiken Public Works Department says residents should be happy with the City’s Green Infrastructure innovation in the downtown parkways.

“We are making progress with the Green Infrastructure innovation in our downtown parkways so please don’t be overly concerned with the work in progress,” City Public Works Director Larry Morris said, regarding holes and other work underway in the parkways. “We and the other team members will soon be putting an engineered soil into the holes,” Morris explained. The new soil is a mixture of compost, sand and topsoil that will fill the holes close to the previous level. “They won’t look nearly as deep after the soil is filled in and then we will plant grasses, shrubs and trees in and near the holes.”

The work is being undertaken by the city, a team of Clemson University scientists who invented this innovative storm water alleviation system and contractor H.G. Reynolds.

Morris says the work is on schedule, with a projected completion date in late summer or early fall.”

The South Carolina Department of Transportation and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control are also involved.

The system is designed to alleviate much of the stormwater runoff that currently flows into Hitchcock Woods.

Worried that the City was grassing in areas that still have large holes, some people had complained to the City, but it is a DHEC requirement to temporarily do that so the soil is not left open to rain and the elements. Planting will be a little late because of the extreme dry weather over the past few months, resulting in the need to install some irrigation to support the planting.

The new system enhances nature’s capacity to absorb stormwater and it is both an economic and environmentally sound approach to reduce flows impacting Sand River, Hitchcock Woods and other downstream areas.

The long-term goal of the project and associated research is to make detention ponds a thing of the past.