LAKELAND, Fla. — Just hours after reaching an agreement with the City of Lakeland, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was dismantling three temporary water pump stations around Polk County's Lake Bonny.
For several weeks, people living near that lake saw their homes inundated by devastating flood waters left by Hurricane Milton.
Now, after 41 days of pumping, the water levels in Lake Bonny have finally returned to normal.
As they remove the industrial pumps and roll up the temporary drainage pipes, it will also finally reopen the local roads.
“The neighborhood will be getting back to normal. I’m sure they're glad about that,” City Spokesman Kevin Cook said. “Unfortunately, some of those Lake Bonny residents still have damage that they're dealing with.”
The flooding around Lake Bonny was so severe that they originally thought they would only need two pumps to get the work done.
Instead, they needed three. And instead of taking about a week to lower the water, it took close to a month.
“Over 8,000,000 gallons a day over a six-week period,” Cook said.
With the temporary pumps gone, only the city’s stationary pump, which was installed in 2019, will be left behind.
It’s designed to handle once-every-10-year flood events, which has some neighbors concerned that is no longer enough to protect them.
“They're gonna need it back,” Matthew, a Lake Bonny neighbor said. “They're gonna need to get the pumps back in the lake like when it starts raining and stuff.”
“I'm worried that the existing pump would fail again. Because that's what gave us all these problems,” neighbor Lorraine Hanks said. “And there are people who will not come back because their homes are not inhabitable.”
Lakeland officials have assured neighbors that they will continue to look into what if anything could've been done differently during these past storms and make improvements to help avoid similar flooding in the future.