PARRISH, Fla. — Communities underwater have become an all-too-familiar sight for neighbors in Manatee and Sarasota counties. This after Hurricane Debby and other storms dumped heavy rains on the area, saturating the ground and causing flooding.
Nearly a month since the hurricane, evidence of that flooding is still visible on properties along CR-675 in Parirsh where pastures are waterlogged with farm animals struggling to find a dry patch to forage.
While many flooded-out neighbors were in no-flood zones, there were those in flood zones who knew what to expect during extreme weather.
Some of them are saying that flooding patterns have been predictable over the last 20 years, but in recently, some things have changed because of land over-development and county leaders hold some blame for either encouraging it or for their inaction in mitigating its effects. On Tuesday morning, the affected residents filled the Manatee County Commission chamber to demand not just an explanation about what happened, but to get answers from county leaders.
"Gaslighting is almost throwing salt into a wound," said Matthew Sauchinitz, a neighbor affected by the floods.
Sauchinitz was among several neighbors who expressed frustration over Hurricane Debbie flooding, the role the water release from the Lake Manatee Dam played, and the poor communication to residents and property owners downstream.
"An hour and 50 minutes later I had a river in front of my house. If there's somebody up here and you said the best, sir, if there's anybody up there that's an expert that can tell me that this is normal, please tell me. This could be your neighborhood next," Sauchinitz said.
"It destroyed all of our equipment, got into our barn, and destroyed our barn. Our animals are having to be boarded at other places because we still cannot get them home because we are still underwater," said Sierra Nelson of Parrish.
10 Tampa Bay visited Nelson's flooded property with her husband.
"It's normally not a pond and we usually just use it for picnics," said Dalton Nelson, as he described a lawn in the compound. "For kind of like a side reference, a standard barbwire fence around here comes up to about my chest and a lot of the fences from what we were told and from what we can gather it was well over that."
He believes the reason for that could be connected to the overdevelopment of watersheds in the area and new housing developments.
"The problem is as far as everything that we've seen is a lot of the development that's going on to a lot of the runoff," he said.
County officials said it's not so straightforward because the amount of rain that was recorded was historic and the Lake Manatee Dam reservoir could not handle that quantity.
"It is not a flood control structure. It is a flow of river, a water supply reservoir for the majority of the drinking water for Manatee County and Sarasota. It is a six billion gallon reservoir," said Evan Pilachowski, Deputy County Administrator. "During all of Hurricane Debbie, we released 18 billion gallons of water that flowed through the reservoir and the 6 billion gallon reservoir is not big enough to act as a water supply reservoir and a storm retention reservoir."
"These systems were faced with waters that were far above that and what happens is you can't put 6 gallons into a 5-gallon bucket," said Charlie Hunsicker, Director of Natural Resources, Manatee County. "When that volume of water hits the land, flooding is going to be the result, there's really no way we can get past that. We have to make decisions when we make civil works."
Pilachowski says in order for improved communications, county staff now have the first draft of updated inundation maps for the dam's downstream properties likely to face potential impact.
He said they are also pursuing third-party analysis and an independent investigation to be conducted by a law firm and are awaiting the scope of work for onward negotiations.