Richmond’s floodwall has been waiting to protect Shockoe Bottom + Manchester from disaster since its completion in 1995. We dove into the history of the project.
🌊 Timeline
- 1972 | Hurricane Agnes brings record flooding to downtown Richmond — 28 feet above flood stage at the City Locks along Dock Street.
- 1986 | Congress passes the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 , which authorized the project and shared the cost between the city + the Norfolk District of the Army Corps of Engineers .
- 1995 | The floodwall is completed .
- 1996 | The James reaches a crest of 23.8 feet during September’s Hurricane Fran .
- 2020 | The city closed floodwall gates for the first time in over two decades in anticipation of historic flooding .
🌊 By the numbers
- 19 | The number of floodwall gates. There has never been a situation where all of the gates have been closed.
- 4,277 and 13,046 | The lengths of the north + south sides of the wall.
- 750 | The number of acres of low-lying land the wall protects .
- 22,000 | How many cubic yards of concrete the wall is made of. There’s also 1,050 tons of reinforcing steel + 55,000 linear feet of steel piles.
- 32 | The number of feet of river flooding the wall was built to withstand .
DPU maintains the floodwall and checks pump stations daily. The floodwall is tested on an annual basis, most recently in early June .
If you want to see infrastructure history firsthand, a-rain-ge a trip to Floodwall Park
. Run, walk, bike, or just watch the river from the top of the wall. Pro tip: The trail can connect
with the Richmond Slave Trail, the Canal Walk, and the Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge.