As the rains began to fall from darkened skies Sunday afternoon, business owners along Highway 50 East may have been hoping drainage systems installed for the Carson City freeway project would prevent all-too-familiar flooding.
No such luck.
The waters - as they have many times before - flowed out of the shallow ditch along the highway's north side and into parking lots. As the storm peaked, water was as much as 3 feet deep at the entrance to the Scolari's supermarket parking lot.
The result was at least four cars damaged and several others stalled after splashing through the water.
Nevada Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Magruder said engineers expect the vast majority of the flooding problem along that section of Highway 50 will go away once the freeway is complete.
But he said the system couldn't do that this weekend because, although huge underground drainage culverts have been installed both north and south of the highway, the system doesn't actually go anywhere yet.
It's still under construction.
"We're doing a tremendous amount of improvements, and we're almost there," he said. "But the system's not connected up yet."
Magruder said two huge culverts are underground north of Highway 50. The system expands to three culverts south of the highway - installed this summer.
But there are two major pieces of the puzzle unfinished. Crews haven't yet cut Highway 50 and connected the north and south halves of the system.
And, more important, he said the drains don't yet go anywhere at the south end.
Eventually, those three culverts will run into a detention basin north of the Nevada State Prison and, from there, drain into the Carson River. Neither the detention basin nor the drainage to the river has been built yet.
"Once the project is completed, you won't see the problems we had this weekend," he said. "We've got $30 to $40 million invested in drainage facilities on this project and it will fix most of the problem."
Flooding has plagued the businesses along Highway 50 in the area of Scolari's and the Piñon Plaza for years. The simple reason, according to engineers, is that the north-south corridor through that area is the lowest part of Eagle Valley. When it rains, water flows there from east, west and from the north.
