The City of Charleston Extension of Low Battery Wall Project
If you live or work on the peninsula, you know the drill: king tides roll in, heavy rain or other storms mean streets flood. That’s why the City of Charleston is continuing to move forward with the Battery Extension project to help protect the city.
City officials say the history of the battery has been over 200 years in the making, and the battery expansion project hopes to build and adapt to help with flooding and water management. In the past year, the city has seen hundreds of road closures due to flooding, and almost 2,000 have been reported in the last 10 years.
In 2018, Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to analyze the coastal storm risk on the Charleston peninsula.Over the years, the project has been working to determine design and infrastructure goals that would extend off the current batteries on the southern part of the peninsula. Currently, the battery extension is in the pre-construction, engineering, and design phase to define how the project will be executed with the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. City officials say they are looking at the western and eastern sides of the peninsula to improve and update the high battery.
“We really want to leverage how many benefits we can get out of these big projects that, you know, are going to be well equipped to help the city become more resilient and adapt over time,” City of Charleston Director of Resilience Kaylan Koszela said. This is a resiliency project within the city to help protect us on our worst days from high tides and flooding, but also serve our community through more public waterfront access and pedestrian connectivity within the city.“Trends are telling us we factor in, you know, 14 inches of sea level rise over the next 25 years. We saw 13 in the past 100. So, clearly things are rapidly accelerating, and that really requires that urgency to act,” Koszela said.The final design has not been finalized yet, but city officials say by spring or summer, residents will be given opportunities for public engagement workshops to weigh in and help shape this project.
