© Thomas Bender – USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The March 12th Sarasota County Commission Meeting that we urged our readers to attend in last month’s E-Newsletter attracted a packed house of concerned citizens about flooding along Phillippi Creek. The commission listened for over an hour to a series of impassioned pleas from the public to make dredging Philippi Creek a top priority. Residents chronicled the dramatic siltation of the creek from erosion over the years with a number of historic pictures and attributed the shallower depth of the creek to be the reason why the recent floods have been so severe.
The Commission acknowledged the severity of the situation and assured the community that addressing Phillippi Creek is a top priority as they move forward. There are a number of options. The Commission had decided in a previous meeting to allocate $75 million for dredging major waterways from the HUD $211 million for hurricane recovery projects. In a partnership with the West Coast Inland Navigation District (WCIND), it was mentioned that WCIND has already committed to dredging Phillippi Creek up to the Tamiami Trail. However, many of the residents along the creek implored the Commission to dredge further or it wouldn’t help their communities.
CONTROLLING FUTURE STORMWATER
Over and above the important decisions on how to best improve flood control in Phillippi Creek, members of Sarasota County’s stormwater staff addressed the likelihood that we need to bolster our stormwater infrastructure to control flooding in the future. This is based on the fact that our current stormwater system is based on controlling flooding in a “Hundred Year Storm” that would handle as much as 10 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. This means that stormwater in streets could run as high as two feet with some movement up driveways and lawns, but no flooding into houses. The concern is that we have already had as much as 17 inches of rain in 24 hours during hurricane Debby and most climatologists are predicting wetter rainy seasons in the immediate future.
To prepare for this eventuality, it’s possible that Sarasota County will need to raise its stormwater standards to handling as much as 12 ½ inches of rainfall over 24 hours. This will mean major investments in improving stormwater infrastructure including berms, dams, conveyance channels, drains and stormwater ponds. It’s a process that we all should follow with great interest.