Prescribed Flooding: Floodplain Reconnection Strategies for Critical Facility Access: City of Kinston, North Carolina
David Hursey, PE
Gwyneth Cartwright
Kimley-Horn
Raleigh, NC
Hospitals are designed for emergencies—but the roads that serve them often are not. Rural channelized streams constrained by development and legacy infrastructure are frequently disconnected from their floodplains, resulting in increased flood risk, degraded habitat, and diminished system resilience. In Kinston, North Carolina, the City initiated a flood mitigation and stream restoration study along approximately 27,000 linear feet of Adkin Branch, a highly developed watershed serving residential, commercial, and medical land uses. Recurrent flooding along N. Herritage Street and Doctors Drive has repeatedly disrupted access to UNC Health Lenoir Hospital, highlighting the urgent need for solutions that restore floodplain function while preserving critical transportation corridors.
The project corridor presented significant challenges, including limited right-of-way, existing utilities, roadway constraints, and the need to avoid adverse downstream impacts. Traditional conveyance-based approaches alone proved insufficient to address flood risk without creating downstream consequences. To overcome these limitations, the study evaluated floodplain reconnection and stream restoration strategies integrated with targeted infrastructure modifications to reduce flood frequency, increase floodplain storage, and improve hydraulic performance.
Previously developed hydrologic and hydraulic models were refined by converting an existing steady-state HEC-RAS model to unsteady flow to better capture attenuation, overbank storage, and floodplain engagement. Updated field survey data informed channel geometry, culvert configurations, and floodplain conditions. A range of alternatives was analyzed, including localized and expanded floodplain benching, floodplain park integration, online detention, basin rerouting, and flow diversion.
Results demonstrated that strategically placed floodplain benches, when paired with carefully sized infrastructure improvements, provided meaningful reductions in water surface elevations and structure flooding without increasing downstream risk. The recommended alternative—currently in design—reconnects the stream to its floodplain through floodplain benching and restoration features while maintaining conveyance and access within this constrained urban corridor.
This presentation will discuss the modeling approach, alternative evaluation process, and design considerations used to balance flood risk reduction, infrastructure constraints, and ecological restoration. Attendees will gain insight into applying floodplain reconnection principles in developed watersheds, leveraging unsteady hydraulic modeling to quantify benefits, and delivering resilient, multi-benefit solutions that protect critical community assets.
About David Hursey, PE
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About Gwyneth Cartwright
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