ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — “For the first time ever we actually had debris lines in the backyard,” said Anna Hellerqvist, pointing to where the sandbags are situated up against her St. Petersburg home.
Hellerqvist said she's lived in the Meadownlawn neighborhood for 20 years and has never seen flooding like they’ve experienced this summer.
“Every blade of grass you see here was completely underwater,” she added.
Her neighborhood is one of several that were essentially underwater after a September storm in St. Pete, during which officials responded to hundreds of calls for service, and 55 cars were found stalled out on roads.
Hellerqvist said she believes the problems have become worse due to the surrounding infrastructure and clogged storm drains in the area.
“The tree roots were taking over the drain and its been getting worse and worse ever since,” she said.
City officials have said the problem stems from the water system not being able to handle the sheer amount of water — more than 7 inches of rain that came in a relatively short amount of time. Most pipes were designed and built decades ago for average rainfall totals at that time.
“That water is going to go somewhere, so it stays in the [low-lying neighborhoods],” said Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley during a resiliency meeting city leaders held on Thursday, as they looked into possible solutions to the ongoing issues.
The council’s Committee of the Whole meeting was focused on storm response, work and future planning, as well as looking ahead to next year’s budget and beyond.
The proposal is for more than $56 million for the storm water program budget, a roughly 28% increase since last year. That includes more funding for operations like expanded drain clearing teams, upgraded infrastructure, backflow preventers and pump stations.
“Improvements are context appropriate. There’s not one solution that’s going to work for every single location,” said city Engineering Director Brejesh Prayman.
While more funding for the operations will be coming next year, the cost to tackle every upgrade necessary for the future is in the billions. The city said like most municipalities, they don’t have the funding, staff or resources to accomplish it all at once.
The city's new Stormwater Master Plan calls for the billion to be spread over the next 25 years.
“Our stormwater management system is another billion dollars plus that we are planning,” Mayor Ken Welch said. “The issue is we need to do that quicker, not over a span of 10 or 15 years.”
The mayor said the city will also be looking to work creatively to find federal grants and other funding sources to do as much as they can, and as soon as they can to tackle the continued flooding problems.
“Understand we don’t have to the capacity to do everything now, but we want to do as much as we can earlier rather than later, because we looked at science over the years, and we see where we are with sea level rise and extreme weather,” added Welch.
Utility fees could also go up. The council will vote later this month on whether to raise rates six to eight percent.
10 Tampa Bay's Christ Hurst contributed to this report.