05-05-2025
Pooler Mayor, City Manager discuss takeaways from last hurricane season, plans for future
Chatham Emergency Services Director Dennis Jones said they are expecting an above-average hurricane season for Coastal Georgia this year, and really all of the East Coast, as has been the case for the last several years. At this point, 'above average' is really becoming the norm, he said.
In preparation for that, the City of Pooler held a hurricane preparation workshop early last week, with a presentation from Jones. Pooler Mayor Karen Williams said that they wanted people to have access to those resources early on, and to know they were trying to get that information out there as the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane season approaches starting June 1.
Last hurricane season brought 18 named storms, with 11 becoming hurricanes and five of those becoming major hurricanes. The Savannah-area experienced flooding, hurricane-force winds toppling trees and no power in back-to-back Tropical Storms Debby and Helene, and rounding out the season with high winds from Hurricane Milton.
Pooler is located about 30 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean, with no major creeks or rivers nearby, but drainage problems have plagued some of the residents for as long as they can remember.
Barrington Estates off Quacco Road in Pooler was just one of the many neighborhoods in the area left with detrimental flooding. Sara Hartley said in an interview at the time than the flooding they experienced during Tropical Storm Debby seemed worse than Hurricane Matthew in 2016. She believed they experienced 11 inches of rain in a day-and-a-half.
The water was almost up to their knees.
"Our lot specifically backs up to one of the branches of the canal system that then links into a branch of the system along 95, and flows out, I believe, into the Ogeechee," Hartley said in an interview in August. "So, part of it is because it's all linked to that, and eventually it just gets inundated with all the stormwater runoff and can't go anywhere fast enough. They did do work to improve our drainage after Matthew, but we haven't had any significant flooding until now."
Pooler City Manager Heath Lloyd, who was hired in August, just days after Tropical Storm Debby dissipated, said one of the first things he heard coming into the city was the localized flooding residents were experiencing in Kelly Drive and Barrington Estates.
Pooler has a collection of detention ponds where water is held and slowly released into the canals. In November, the city initiated a contract with Coleman Engineering to do surveys to figure out how to improve the drainage in Kelly Drive. A few weeks ago, they received the results and are now trying to move forward with a three-phase project. The first phase will be to restore the drainage pattern on Kelly Drive, and Lloyd said the city will try to move forward with that project sometime in the second quarter of the year, but probably not before the beginning of hurricane season.
The other project with Barrington Estates, which is off the Hardin Canal, involves working with the developer to create 'essentially a nine acre lake.' Lloyd said that project is moving slower than they wanted it to, but the wheels are turning. This project would not only help those in Barrington Estates, but everyone who is impacted by the December, Pooler City Council approved the widening of the Piper Makers Canal from Pooler Parkway to I-95, a $1.6 million project, which will be finished up right before hurricane season starts, to help hold more water.
Lloyd mentioned that the city had a bit of a setback in developing a city-wide stormwater master plan, like Savannah, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced an end to its Building Infrastructure and Communities (GRANT) program. Pooler would have received half a million dollars to look at drainage improvements needed for large waterways and local flooding.
Another thing that could help with any local flooding would be for Homeowner Associations to clean out their detention ponds, which Williams said many associations did not know they were responsible for. The city has begun having monthly meetings with Pooler HOA's to explain that they may not be holding the water that they should be and are required to hold.
'We made it perfectly clear to them that they are responsible for getting that sludge cleaned out periodically,' Williams said.
More: For one Pooler neighborhood, the waters of Tropical Storm Debby have yet to recede
More: Savannah's location made it more susceptible to Helene's hurricane-force winds
Williams said the biggest takeaway from last hurricane season is that they always have to be prepared, because you never know what direction the storms are coming.
'We did an excellent job as a city and staff to prepare,' Williams said. 'We were the lead on a lot of things, like being the first to get sandbags, and those are the types of things we'll continue to do.'
Lloyd said the biggest takeaway for him, was how the city responded in the aftermath of a storm event. In accordance with that, two things expected to come up in council will be the recommendation of a contract for Pooler to have its own debris management and an emergency response contractor. In the past, Pooler piggybacked off the county's debris management contract.
'Piggybacking doesn't give you that priority level of service though, so we're going to move forward, hopefully by June,' Lloyd said. '[The emergency response contractors] have what they call a 72-hour window where you can have a contractor clear your roadways and allow you to begin to restore your city. So what I'm looking at is having multiple options to respond to storms and restore our city.'
Williams emphasized that the city is being proactive to try and handle any issues that may arise.
'I think it's important for the residents to understand that we're not going to be able to solve it all overnight, but we are going to systematically, you know, try to improve drainage for the entire city,' Lloyd said.
Jones' presentation on how residents can personally prepare for hurricane season can be found on the Pooler website. He encouraged residents to start defining an emergency plan for their families and putting together an emergency kit.
Destini Ambus is the general assignment reporter for the Savannah Morning News, covering the municipalities, and community and cultural programs. You can reach her at DAmbus@
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Pooler Mayor, City Manager discuss hurricane preparation
