Monterey Receives Over $1 Million Grant To Address Drainage Problems

Monterey will put a new $1 million grant toward controlling flooding in the Whitaker Park area.

Cultural Administrator Rafferty Cleary said most, if not all, the grant money will be used in Phase Three of the plan to address the area between Railroad Avenue and Industrial Drive. Cleary said before the project started, flooding was a huge issue in the area.

“The park would flood pretty bad” Cleary said. “I think folks who live in Monterey are pretty familiar with some of the issues we’ve had in that area. So, it caused damage to the park and caused damage to some other areas.”

Cleary said another area impacted by the flooding was the Rail Trail. Cleary said any money left over will be put toward planting trees and plants that will help soak up water in the area.

“If we got some funding that’s left over in this grant, we would like to possibly do some bio-projects in the area of Whitaker Park,” Cleary said. “There’s another area near the Monterey Depot Museum we’d like to address too, but again our main focus with this is the area along railroad avenue and industrial drive that we really want to focus on.”

Monterey has to finish the project by September of 2026 to meet grant requirements.

“There is sort of a deadline to meet, but we’ve got plenty of time to get to that point, and I’m very confident we’ll be able to complete the project before then,” Cleary said.

Cleary said details of what infrastructure is being built where is currently being worked out by engineers. He said there is no solid timeline yet as to when the project will start.

“These improvements that we’ve been able to make have really helped, but in order to really tie it all together we need to tackle this third phase out to Industrial Drive,” Cleary said. “It can cause some pretty big issues, and Monterey’s been working for several years trying to remedy those issues, and we’ve some seen some improvements, no doubt about it. Just hoping to tie all this together by getting this third phase completed.”