New Underground Pipe Helps Relieve Flooding in Carlsbad Village

Construction crews recently installed storm drains along two streets in Carlsbad Village to help improve drainage in northwest Carlsbad, where some of the oldest infrastructure in the city lies underground. 

The new subsurface pipes are designed to catch the storm water and send it to the city's main system more efficiently to eliminate flooding on some Village streets. The project also included making improvements to sidewalks, landscaping, and mid-block crosswalks, and repaving both streets. 

Storm drains in Carlsbad Village and other parts of northwest Carlsbad were designed in the early 1960s and have difficulty handling current demands, so the City of Carlsbad Public Works Department is systematically upgrading storm drainage and other infrastructure there.    

The new storm drain system along Roosevelt and Madison replaces an old system of draining along curbs and gutters and through sections of smaller PVC pipe, which couldn't handle large volumes of rainwater. “We had little drains that went behind the tree planter,” said City of Carlsbad associate engineer Sherri Howard, who’s managing the replacement project. “The drains were so tiny every time it rained they clogged. By putting in new storm drains it gets the water off the street much better.” The project consisted of 420 feet of new 18-inch-diameter reinforced concrete pipe, 56 feet of new 12-inch-diameter PVC pipe, four new catch basins and four cleanouts that connect to the existing systems on Carlsbad Village Drive and Grand Avenue. 

The contractor, Burtech Pipeline Inc., completed the work for $413,000. The project, which was supervised by the city’s Construction Management and Inspection Division, is part of a multi-year program to improve drainage in northwest Carlsbad. Howard said that the new system is working well on Roosevelt, but as engineers were designing the system for Madison they realized that the pipes downstream on Grand Avenue lack the capacity to handle the better drains on Madison. 

"We have a project to upsize the system on Grand that's in design right now," she said. The city has plans to upgrade other storm drains in northwestern Carlsbad later this year.

–City of Carlsbad