Alice completes $6.9 million Virginia Street drainage project
Virginia Street’s $6.9 million drainage fix is complete, promising less standing water in Alice after more than five years of planning and construction.
Homes and businesses along Virginia Street, S. Reynolds and Old Kingsville should finally see less standing water after heavy rain now that Alice has completed its $6.9 million Virginia Street Area Drainage Project. City leaders and state officials gathered in Alice on June 22 to mark the finish of a fix that had been in planning and construction for more than five years.
The project was paid for with nearly $7 million in mitigation funding from the Texas General Land Office. KIII-TV reported that the work included reconstruction of streets, upgrades to storm sewer systems and improvements to roadside drainage ditches, a package meant to do more than patch a single bad spot and instead address a recurring flood problem across the project area.
State records show the drainage work was not the only visible change. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation listed a related Virginia Street Area project in Alice with a start date of Sept. 2, 2024, and a completion date of July 1, 2025. That job included installation of about 4,900 square yards of new sidewalks and curb ramps as part of street improvements, adding pedestrian infrastructure alongside the drainage repairs.
The investment also fits into a broader flood-control push across Jim Wells County. In 2020, the Texas General Land Office announced more than $29.7 million in flood-mitigation projects for Jim Wells County and the cities of Alice and Premont, targeting communities that had taken repetitive storm damage in 2015, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and again in 2018. For Alice, the Virginia Street work is part of that larger effort to keep streets passable and reduce the kind of stormwater backups that can damage homes, slow traffic and make routine trips across town harder after a hard rain.
Alice’s own records show the project was moving through procurement in 2024, including an addendum dated July 18, 2024. That matters because the city operates under a home-rule charter adopted in 1949 with a council-manager form of government, which puts a premium on how projects move from grant approval to bids, construction and completion.
The Texas Water Development Board’s February 2024 final engineering report for Alice’s master drainage plan said the city studied alternatives to reduce the frequency and severity of flooding. With the Virginia Street project now complete, the test shifts from planning documents and funding announcements to the next storm, when residents will see whether the rebuilt streets, storm sewer system and drainage ditches do the job taxpayers paid for.
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