Virginia builds $18 million stormwater vault system to mitigate flooding

(UI) – According to the Water Environment Federation’s Stormwater Report (WEF Stormwater Report), Virginia’s Arlington County built a stormwater vault system beneath an elementary school to “mitigate the major impacts of flooding.”

The stormwater vaults, constructed underneath Cardinal Elementary School in the county’s Torreyson Run Watershed, are capable of holding over 15 million liters of water, making it “one of the largest precast concrete stormwater vaults in the Mid-Atlantic,” WEF Stormwater Report said.

Flooding from a summer 2019 storm that devastated the area turn what was supposed to be a small vault into a two-part, $18 million stormwater project that took two years to complete. The first phase of construction involved laying underground pipes and junction boxes to redirect water from a previously-installed storm sewer beneath the elementary school to the new vault location. The second phase included the physical vault construction, which ended summer 2023.

A 7-ft. underground pipe carries water to the vaults. After a few hours, gravity brings said water out of the vault and into a designated drainage site. Heavy rainfall in August 2023 put the vault system to the test with success, WEF Stormwater Report acknowledged.

The project is part of the greater "Flood Resilient Arlington" program. According to the government website, Arlington’s stormwater system includes 10,000 storm drains and more than 330 miles of storm sewers.

This story was originally reported by WEF Stormwater Report.

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