‘We want some answers;’ Whiteville residents demand city response to prevent flooding

WHITEVILLE, NC (WWAY-TV) – Many Whiteville residents and business owners attended a heated city council meeting Wednesday night as several of them demanded a response to recent flooding.

“We’re here to stand we want some answers and we want them now, we don’t know what the hold up is,” said Elizabeth Kasitati, owner of the Donut Shop and Restaurant said.

Kasitati said her business has repeatedly been flooded with storm waters over the years.

“We flooded here two weeks ago at the donut shop we had a foot and a half of water inside our building from simply rain water and we’ve had flooding issues over and over,” Kasitati said.

This is what her business looked like a couple weeks ago, water covered the floors when heavy rains came through. Her concern is the toll these flood waters are taking on businesses like hers.

“It happens so often and so frequent we’re just out here crying for help,” Kasitati said. “We just want to resolve our flooding problem so we can come to work and go home just like everybody else.”

Whiteville Mayor Terry Mann said the city has a few projects already underway in different parts of the city to alleviate flooding, but the problem requires more than just one solution

“Each pocket is a different problem and a different solution,” Mann said.

Mann said the majority of the flooding in Whiteville comes from the Soules Swamp nearby during Tuesday’s meeting he proposed the swamp could be dredged.

“Swamp filling up with trash some people claim that there’s a beaver population has something to do with it when you put all those things together it’s a multi-faceted problem and there’s not one solution,” Mann said.

Mann said some of the proposed projects in the city have been stalled due to a lack of engineering and funding

“If we do all these projects on based on a 25 year flood level based on where our typography is were still going to have some flooding we’re not going to be able to alleviate flooding 100%”