A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Tuesday to celebrate the completion of “critical” drainage upgrades in the Balboa Acres area.

As part of the nearly $611,000 project, five outdated, manually operated sluice gates were replaced with state-of-the-art automatic check valves designed to prevent backflow during heavy rain events, according to a news release.

Funding for the project came from the city’s drainage fee fund.

“The community previously had been inundated. This should make a big impact, big improvement to this area, reduce the amount of flooding that there is in streets, reduce the amount of flooding that potentially could happen to someone's home,” McAllen Director of Engineering Eduardo Mendoza said.  

The project took seven months to complete.