Saraota County Commissioner plans to bring a deluge of questions and concerns.
Ramon Lopez
Original Air Date: Jan. 17, 2024
Host: Were you underwater during this epic storm season? Even if you weren’t, you might be interested in a workshop coming up Jan. 21. This Tuesday, for the first time since the storms, the Sarasota County Commissioners will discuss stormwater management and lessons learned from the recent flooding. WSLR reporter Ramon Lopez talked to one of the county commissioners about what he expects from the event.
Ramon Lopez: Floodwater management is a key local story, as the year 2024 will be remembered for Sarasota’s series of severe storms. None of this escaped the attention of stormwater engineer and hydrologist Steve Suau, who was asked by Spencer Anderson, Sarasota County’s Director of Public Works, to do an independent study to determine the cause of the unprecedented flooding from Hurricane Debby around the county, including Laurel Meadows, which was unexpected.
Steve Suau speaking recently at Selby Library.
Residents pointed to overdevelopment. Developers said the unprecedented volume of hurricane-produced rainfall was to blame. Local government officials point to the county’s current stormwater regs & control systems, saying they were simply overwhelmed.
The county adheres to what is often referred to as a 100-year storm threshold—of 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period—to determine acceptable flooding in certain areas. In the aftermath of the Debby deluge, Public Works Department staffers said there was simply too much rain, up to 18 inches in some areas of the county, for the infrastructure to handle.
At issue is whether the Public Works Department’s long-standing stormwater regulations are stringent enough to have prevented the severe flooding seen by Debby.
Spencer Anderson told county officials in late October that an undetected berm breach, plus the Debby deluge, caused the Laurel Meadows flooding. But he said “at this time, we do not have any data or findings that differ from Mr. Suau’s, but we will not be able to agree or disagree with his findings until our evaluation is complete.”
He went on to say the breach was “likely to have developed or been greatly exacerbated during Hurricane Debby, and data collected will help us better understand how this breach influenced the flooding stages and duration.”
This coming week on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the Sarasota County Commission will hold a special workshop in which Anderson will reveal the results of analyses regarding what happened and why. Steve Suau will present his detailed findings and key recommendations.
They include:
- Identify significant floodplain areas and protect them from development.
- Clean stormwater streams on a regular basis.
- Inspect dikes and levees with responsibility for their maintenance and upkeep established.
- Update the stormwater criteria set back in 1996 in the face of climate change and based on what science says.
Newly-elected Sarasota County Commissioner Tom Knight, who served as Sarasota County Sheriff before retiring, looks forward to hearing from Steve Suau.
County Commissioner Tom Knight being sworn in this past November.
Tom Knight: I think it’s great that we hired a consultant, an outside expert, who lives in this area, who’s a geologist, who understands it. But the coolest thing about Steve is he wouldn’t take money from us. He’s here as a public service to us, to his expertise. It’s going to be really interesting, one, I’ve read his report; two, to see what he has to say in addition to anything that I may not have picked up in the report.
RL: What does Knight see coming out of the hearing?
TK: What’s our future going to be with stormwater runoff? A dike breaking? Something we could prevent in the future? Are the ditches overgrown? Do we need to commit to a five-year plan, three-year plan, one-year plan? What’s it look like? What’s it going to cost to have these facilities cleaned out? Was there any negligence from the past, where maybe some of the funding was there but wasn’t used for maintenance? These are all things that, like everybody else, I don’t know—I don’t understand—but I’m here to learn. Hopefully on the 21st the five elected officials will get a good education and be able to have a good discussion about what the future’s going to be so that we don’t have continuing problems when there’s rainwater. But what’s our future look like from an infrastructure standpoint? Water quality? Has development created that problem, like much of the perception is? Or is it that the ditches haven’t been cleaned out, modified, maintained that’s creating a problem leading into the creeks? Those are all things that I know as much about as the common citizen and that I’m looking forward to learning about.
Cowpen Slough dike breach.
RL: Will there be a stormwater action plan coming out of all this? Is the workshop simply a baby step?
TK: It’s a very first step. We’re having a workshop. Strategically, there’s never been anything in the history of Sarasota County in a strategic plan about this. It is in our strategic plan now—about infrastructure and water quality—so it’s in our plan, but there’s never been anything strategic to say geographically, regionally, this area of the county needs to be maintained or looked at. It’s just been kind-of a system that ran on its own. It seems to me, as a citizen and as your elected official, it seems to me like it’s run its course and it needs attention now for strategy.
The flooded Laurel Meadows subdivision.
RL: Knight wants to know if the Laurel Meadows flooding was avoidable.
TK: One of the questions I will have is, if it had been maintained—were there pepper trees in there that reduced the sturdiness of an area where there’s a lot of sand? Those things were built many years ago. Do we need to have them all reviewed and evaluated? Those things were built back in the day in Cowpen Slough and all that. Those were built by the farmers for agriculture, and now we’ve allowed—over the years, before I arrived—they’ve allowed development in those areas, trusting that those systems would remain in place. That’s one of the questions that I’m going to have for Steve.
RL: Knight thinks having an additional local set of eyes on the problem would be a good idea.
TK: I think we probably need to hire people who are more skilled. Not that our people that we have now aren’t, but you don’t hire a firefighter and put them in a cop car; you don’t put a cop on a fire engine. Do we have the skill set to do that? They have outside consultants looking at it, but outside consultants from Orlando are just simply that: they’re getting paid to write a report. I think we need to have somebody on our staff that has care and concern about the community.
RL: This is Ramon Lopez for WSLR News.
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