MIDLAND COUNTY, Texas — Many people in the Permian Basin are wondering 'now what?'
An area of Midland is still underwater. The worst of it is near Highway 80 and Faudree Road.
Some of the businesses there can't even assess the damage to their shops because the water is too high to travel through.
Then backing up to those businesses, there are homes that are sitting in a few inches of water.
Can anything can be done? Well, county leaders do not have an answer for that.
This is some of the worst flooding Midland has seen in decades.
Unfortunately, time and sunshine might be the only solution as water evaporates.
The blame here likely lies with mother nature.
“This is one of those situations, and no one knew what was going to happen and they put way too many floodwaters into way too small of an area,” Scott Ramsey, Midland County Commissioner, precinct 1, said.
Mix together a record amount of rain in four days, rapid development behind Cinergy off Faudree and a drainage system that was in the midst of being reconstructed, and you have yourself the perfect storm.
“I had someone suggest, 'why don’t we pump the water out' but where do we put it?” Ramsey said.
Ramsey tells me the City of Midland is able to pump water out of flooded areas and into the Scharbauer Draw.
However, the county does not have that option.
They do have a grant, given to them last year, that allows the county to study the flood plain in Midland.
The problem is, the study was just a few weeks into getting started.
“We are doing a county-wide flood plain study," Ramsey said. "To identify problems just like this, with all development that is planned between Odessa and 1788.”
While a study will not solve this week's problems, Ramsey says they will use this storm to plan for the future.
“We got to have all the right information because we are trying to do good, spending money on the roads, we’re trying to help these people," Ramsey said. "If there were mistakes were made we need to find out if there were. If there weren’t mistakes made, we need to be able to explain that to the citizens who were affected.”
Commissioner Ramsey tells us if anyone in his precinct is having issues to reach out and report it.
This applies across the board, as the commissioner’s court can only fix problems in the county if citizens point them out.