Columbia riverwalk to stay closed another year as city repairs 2015 canal damage
Columbia’s beloved riverfront park and riverwalk spanning the length of the city’s canal will stay largely closed for at least a year, as the city inches forward major repair work to fortify one of Columbia’s main water sources.
The Columbia Canal suffered heavy damage during the historic flood that hit the city in 2015. Record-setting rainfall and numerous dam breaches left much of Columbia underwater. Water tore through the canal, leaving a 60-foot hole in the embankment and incapacitating numerous headgates that control the flow of water into the canal.
Funding questions and regulatory hurdles delayed repair work for nearly a decade, but finally last year the repairs began in earnest.
But that also has meant the popular riverfront park and riverwalk have been largely closed for the last year. That won’t be changing anytime soon.
The earliest the riverwalk could reopen is likely July 2027, and the park likely won’t be fully accessible from both the south and north entrances until 2028.
Clint Shealy, an assistant city manager and Columbia’s top water official, said work is progressing, but because there are so many moving pieces it is difficult to provide an exact timeline for when residents can expect the park to be fully accessible again.
There are three main projects that must be completed before the canal is fully restored and the park fully re-opened.
The work includes repairing the headgates at the north end of the canal, closing a 60-foot hole in the side of the canal embankment, and creating an alternative water supply where water will be pumped directly from the Broad River, reinforcing the city’s water system if the canal itself were to fail again.
That alternative water supply project is already underway. The project is currently visible from Interstate 126, and includes a new structure that will sit above the water.
Right now, that project is one of the main factors driving the riverwalk’s closure. In order to build the new intake system, a large portion of the riverwalk has to be closed because the work touches the embankment, which the trail sits on top of.
What’s open now — and what isn’t
Most of the riverfront park remains closed today.
From the south entrance at Laurel Street, visitors can still access the front end of the park, including the pedestrian bridge, some picnic tables and the grassy area along the riverbank. But most of the trail beyond that point remains fenced off.
The north entrance near River Drive and the Broad River Bridge will be closed longer. It likely won’t re-open until 2028, Shealy said. That’s where the city is working to replace the canal headgates. Shealy said the north end will likely remain closed another 15 to 18 months as construction on the headgates is just now beginning.
Change from last fall: night reopening isn’t happening
In October, Shealy told The State the city expected to re-open the riverwalk for limited evening hours while contractors were off the clock, under the terms of the construction contract.
That plan has changed. Shealy said the contract for the new water intake system initially required opening the trail at night, but the work has gotten more complicated. For safety and budget reasons, it’s not possible to open the trail each night and then close it back up in the morning.
That means the trail will be almost entirely closed for the next year.
A third project could muddy the park timeline
The final project needed to fully restore the canal is to fix the 60-foot hole in the embankment, which has been plugged with a temporary rock dam for the past decade. The city will invite contractors to bid on the project in coming weeks. Once a contractor is selected, the construction timeline could run 28 to 30 months, meaning the repair itself could last more than two years, or until the end of 2028, Shealy said.
The embankment repair is less likely to impact access to the park compared to the work already underway, but Shealy said the city won’t know for sure until contractors develop a detailed schedule.
Ideally, Shealy said, the city would coordinate projects to reduce the overall time the riverwalk needs to be closed. Still, he said the embankment repair could extend through the end of 2028, though he does not think the riverwalk will be closed continuously for that entire period. Instead, he said there could be intermittent closures even after sections of the path reopen.
“We’re going to do everything we can to have some open period,” he said. “We need to get as much of the park open back as soon as we can.”
Federal funding update
The State previously reported that a nearly $33 million federal grant needed for the canal work was up in the air, after the Trump administration cut the grant’s funding.
The city has since been assured that it will receive those dollars.
In total, all the canal work is expected to cost up to $150 million, with federal money paying the majority of the bill.
Another, separate effort tied to the 2015 flood damage is a plan to revive the city’s hydroelectric power plant, which was washed out in 2015 and has not generated power for more than a decade.
That work will be handled separately from the canal projects, Shealy said. The city is also not paying for that work, instead the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay that bill, which Shealy said could be between $60 and $80 million. Once back online, he said, the city would be able to make money selling the power, while also moving closer to its goal of transitioning to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2036.
