Decades-old pipes and open ditches built in the 1940s are still driving flooding and water-quality problems in Mount Pleasant's Mill Tract Basin, and the town is now asking residents to help decide how to fix it. Project leaders gathered initial public feedback at East Cooper Montessori Charter School on Wednesday, kicking off a process that will shape engineering designs for the 284-acre basin in the Shem Creek watershed.
The Mill Tract Basin currently moves stormwater through a patchwork of pipes, swales and open channels, much of it dating back to the 1940s, according to counton2.com. That aging infrastructure discharges near Freelock Drive and has contributed to flooding and water-quality concerns that persist throughout the basin and downstream in Shem Creek, as reported by Yahoo News. The basin was flagged as one of Mount Pleasant's highest-priority drainage areas in the 2017 Old Village Watershed Study, and WCBD News 2 reports it remains the town's top-priority basin today.
What the $6.25 Million Project Would Actually Change
The town and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are jointly developing the $6.25 million project, which is designed to replace that decades-old infrastructure. Planned improvements include restoring several drainage ditches, upgrading undersized stormwater pipes, and targeting known flooding hotspots, the same source notes. Green infrastructure will be worked in where feasible, and the town has said bioretention areas and vegetated swales could help filter pollutants, improve water quality and promote groundwater recharge.
Marissa Noble, a project engineer with the Town of Mount Pleasant, said the project will fold grey and green infrastructure together throughout its footprint and will include low-impact development techniques. Those nature-based approaches are meant to help return the basin closer to its pre-development hydrology, promoting infiltration into the ground rather than simply routing runoff to another outlet. It's part of a broader pattern across the town's capital planning: an FY 2022 capital-improvement document notes that many Mount Pleasant neighborhoods were built before the state's minimum stormwater drainage standards existed, leaving them with undersized systems that don't meet current design requirements.
Residents Asked to Weigh In on Neighborhood Techniques
At Wednesday's meeting, project leaders asked residents which stormwater techniques they'd prefer to see used in their own neighborhoods, with that feedback intended to inform the designs engineers ultimately draw up. The format mirrors other recent town efforts — at a Flood Resilience Committee meeting in September 2025, Noble presented the Remley's Point Micro Stormwater Drainage Project, described in meeting minutes as the second project in the town's micro stormwater program and budgeted at roughly $275,000, a far smaller scale than the Mill Tract effort.
A Timeline Still Coming Into Focus
Design work on the Mill Tract Basin project is aimed at wrapping up by the end of 2027, with construction targeted to begin in spring 2028, according to the project engineers' stated goals. Coverage of the timeline has varied: counton2.com reported design work is underway and expected to be completed by winter 2027, with construction projected to begin in spring 2028, while the Post and Courier described an estimated six-to-eight-month design phase, with completion put at late 2027 or early 2028. Either way, construction remains more than a year off, and no final engineering designs have been released.
The Mill Tract Basin project would be a far bigger undertaking than some of the town's past stormwater work. The FY 2022 capital-improvement plan notes that design on the Edwards Park Basin project was completed in 2021 before that project moved into construction, giving residents a sense of how other Mount Pleasant drainage basins have progressed from planning to dirt-moving. For now, the Mill Tract project remains in the feedback-gathering stage, with Wednesday's session at East Cooper Montessori Charter School serving as the public's first chance to shape how engineers approach the basin's flooding and water-quality problems.
