$40 million pond reassuring Atlanta community worried about flooding

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    VINE CITY, GA (WGCL) — A rainy day becomes the perfect test for a flood relief project. Atlanta’s Cook Park in Vine City is still surrounded by construction fencing, but the $40+ million dollar giant collection pond is doing what it was designed to do.

Neighbors are chafing at the fence keeping them from playground equipment, but they are marveling at the engineering keeping their homes from constant flooding.

“It is great. Just wonderful,” says a refugee from Castro’s Cuba, a Vine City resident for forty years whose home is on one side of the park, his grocery store on the other.

The ponds and sweeping walkways conceal miles of pipes and drains underneath, bringing city council members Andre Dickens and Michael Julian Bond to admire the outcome of the long-delayed project.

“This is not merely a solution for immediately for Vine City, but for all western neighborhoods in city of Atlanta,” Bond said. He grew up here, knows most of the neighbors who lost their homes to constant flooding. Twenty years ago rainwater combined with sewage was so severe neighbors escaped by boat! 60 houses washed away.

“My heart says we’ve turned what was a tragedy, turned this into an asset rather than a liability.”

The Trust for Public Land raised much of the $40+ million dollars and designed the park. The pipes and drains beneath the pond and grassy field collect rainwater from downtown Atlanta and 160 more acres in English Avenue. Towering fountains in granite-edged pools move the water and help clean it before sending the rainwater down broad steps and through grassy ponds to slowly return to Proctor Creek. A broader story of west side environmental and artistic revival is created by the Meridian Herald’s Atlanta Music Festival, an organization dedicated to advancing harmony among neighbors. Its videos include art, music and history.

So when will the park open? The City of Atlanta says soon. Very soon.

The City of Atlanta gave CBS46 the following statement on the issue:

The Cook Park Project represents a collaborative effort between the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management (DWM), Trust for Public Land, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the National Monument Foundation—most importantly—the residents of Vine City.

The park has been designed to provide capacity relief to the City’s combined sewer infrastructure by capturing 150 acres of drainage and detaining up to nine million gallons of stormwater on site. Green infrastructure features include bioretention ponds to collect flow from incoming pipes, stormwater planters to capture runoff from the adjacent streets, a Great Lawn designed with engineered soils to manage flood waters and a wet pond surrounded by constructed wetlands to improve water quality.

Once completed in February 2021, Cook Park will showcase the benefits of tackling age-old infrastructure challenges through innovative green infrastructure solutions.

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