LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) - There's a massive flood relief project underway for residents of the River Oaks subdivision. The Lafayette Consolidated Government has contracted a local engineer and consulting company, McBade to construct a detention pond.

The engineer on the project said the detention pond will help the upstream subdivisions on the northeast of Surrey Street.

KLFY has learned that the River Oaks subdivision drains by way of a pipe system to a pump station. The water waits at the pump station to be pumped out to the Vermilion River.  When the river water is high, the water can't be pumped out from the pump station. It backs up in the subdivision and that's what causes the flooding.

Principal Engineer and owner of McBade Engineers & Consultants, LLC  Pamela Granger said the River Oaks Detention Pond will have enough volume to store the water collected from the subdivision. It will be held in the pond until the pump station can pump it into the river.

"It's a detention pond, kind of like a reservoir up stream of this pump station that's dedicated to this subdivision because all the pipes were going to this one location into the flume. Now the pipes are going to go and fill up the detention pond," Granger explains.

Currently, residents may experience water collecting around their drains during a major rain event. The ponding of water is backup and that backup can build up in the streets.

"Even if this wet well is full, even if the pump station is not pumping, you now have a place for that water to drain. So it will take a lot longer before you are going to see that ponding in your streets and of course that lessens your flood risk of course," Granger added.

Granger said the goal is to get the pond up and functional for the height of the hurricane season.

She anticipates a completion date in the next 60 days, around mid-August.

"They'll be finished excavating long before that but all the pipe connections and the things we need to do, those things take a little bit extra time," she noted.