Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Columbia’s 1,000-year flood. The flood saw five straight days of heavy rain, which broke a 100-foot hole in the city’s canal.

A major source for Columbia’s water treatment plant, the canal supplies fresh water to nearly 200,000 people in the Midlands.

Clint Shealy oversees the canal’s ongoing repairs. He’s an assistant city manager and the head of Columbia’s drinking water system.

The repair project seeks to improve the canal’s headgates, repair damage on the embankment, and create a new pathway to pump water from the Congaree River into Columbia’s water supply tanks. The total cost of the project is between $130 million and $150 million, with construction scheduled to end in early 2028.

Shealy began working for the city six weeks before the floods hit and didn’t think he’d still be working on repairs in 2025.

His three-step plan to solidify the canal and protect fresh water was delayed because of a lack of government funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“FEMA offered us $10 million to repair the embankment. We politely said no thank you, we think we’re missing a zero, we need to reevaluate this,” Shealy said.

Fundraising was “supposed to take 12-18 months,” Shealy said. He mentioned that “it took another 54 months” to get more money from FEMA.

Despite Shealy’s efforts to secure government funding, roughly $33 million for the project is still in limbo.

The money was going to be supplied by the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. To Shealy’s surprise, the program was removed by President Donald Trump in April.

However, Columbia’s project should still be eligible to receive the money that was originally promised to it.

“Thankfully, we’ve met the two litmus tests,” Shealy said. “We started construction in January, the funds had been obligated previously. All indications are that our grant is secure. But I’m not 100% confident because we haven’t gotten any money yet.”

Shealy and the city of Columbia continue to work on remodeling their canal and water supply despite the uncertainty.