Dallas breaks ground on Charlie Pump Station | wfaa.com

Oct 30, 2024

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DALLAS — For 94 years, Golden Gate Missionary Baptist Church has stood and served in the same spot of southern Dallas’ Bottom District.

“We've seen the bottom grow,” said Vincent Parker, Golden Gate MBC Pastor. “We’ve been there as the community declined because of disinvestment.”

Parker said during segregation, the Bottom was one of the areas Blacks could live in, and for decades was ignored. “The city had invested no dollars in streets, in pump pipes, sewers, none of that for 50 to 60 years. Some streets just got sidewalks,” said Parker.

Now, as development increases, there is an even bigger improvement in the works. Dallas city leaders broke ground on the new Charlie Pump Station.

The new pump station near Jefferson and Brazos Street will serve parts of West Dallas, North Oak Cliff and the Bottom.

“Many of the homes or lots in the bottom are in the floodplain," Parker explained. "And so, the pump station helps to mitigate some of that."

It will help allow more development. The new station will lower the risk of flooding and will provide better stormwater drainage. It has the capacity to collect and pump 225,000 gallons of stormwater over the West Levee and into the Trinity River.

“In the last 90 years, the city has gotten a lot more non-pervious surfaces, roadways, there’s been a lot more density, so we have a lot of stormwater runoff,” said Chad West, Dallas City Council D-1.

West said the current station, which is almost 100 years old, has successfully worked in the past, but this new station looks to the future.

“This is really not for tomorrow or next year because our pump station that we have now is still good for that, but it's really for the next 10, 20, 30 years in the future,” said West.

It is a future for a staple like Golden Gate MBC, which has long fought for improvement since the day the pump was initially built. “When you invest so much time and effort into seeing a neighborhood transformed and grow and redevelop, then this is a big piece of it,” said Parker.

The new Charlie Pump Station is already under construction as the initial groundbreaking date was scheduled for June 2024 but was postponed to October because of weather.

The pump station is expected to be completed and in use by mid-2026.