T Anchor tidbits

A few facts from City Manager Alan Taylor's T Anchor Lake presentation at the Amarillo City Commission meeting on Tuesday:

-- The cost estimate for construction of a park at T Anchor Lake, which lies north of Interstate 40 at Nelson Street, is $11.5 million.

-- The bulk of the cost -- almost $6 million -- would go for earthwork. A lot of dirt will have to be moved to make some areas habitable and dig other areas deeper so that the lake still has enough capacity to handle the drainage it receives from a surrounding 4-square-mile area.

-- Fingers of the area that drains into T Anchor extend south, beyond Interstate 40, to Southeast 34th Avenue; west to downtown Amarillo; and, north to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks.

-- The city is awaiting new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood plain maps that are expected to raise the 100-year flood plain level of T Anchor by a couple of feet, Taylor said.

-- That means the earth moved to make the area habitable for a park will need to be piled a couple of feet higher than it would have under the old maps. The finished floor level of anything built in a 100-year flood plain area must be 1 foot higher than the elevation level set by FEMA.

-- Parts of the site lie more than 30 feet below flood plain level. And the deepest part of the lake is about 50 feet below flood plain level.

-- An estimated $1.63 million of the estimated $11.5 million cost of a park would pay for drainage system improvements and pipe to carry water and prevent flood issues.

-- The pump that takes stormwater out of T Anchor when it fills sends water westward through a pipeline to a stormwater drainage system in downtown Amarillo. That system moves the water north to Thompson Park.