Lakewood Ranch's response to Hurricane Debby flooding was immediate

Residents whose homes flooded in Summerfield Woods and Bluffs following Hurricane Debby Aug. 5 are still seeking answers as to how and why stormwater damaged their homes. 

Several of the flood victims attended a Town Hall meeting Feb. 5 with Commissioner Bob McCann at the Lakewood Ranch Library. 

“What belongs to us (Manatee County), we’re going to fix,” McCann told constituents. “What belongs to Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, Rex (Jensen) says he’s going to fix.” 

Rex Jensen is the CEO and president of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, Lakewood Ranch’s parent company. 

After McCann offered a public invitation to three major developers in the area — Jensen, Pat Neal and Carlos Beruff — Jensen was the first to take the commissioner up on his offer. The two men met at the Manatee County Administration Building Feb. 3.

McCann’s invitation was to talk about a residential building moratorium in District 5, which includes Lakewood Ranch. McCann cited flooding from Hurricane Debby as a reason to halt construction. 

Following the Town Hall, McCann told the East County Observer that while he never made the motion for a building moratorium that was scheduled for the Feb. 4 commission meeting, he didn’t pull the motion either. 

He pushed the item to March so he could meet with developers first to discuss alternatives. 

The East County Observer sat down with Jensen Feb. 7 to get more details on what was fixed in Lakewood Ranch and what he believes still needs to be fixed to reduce the threat of flooding.

“I fixed all the stuff I could fix,” Jensen said. “Regardless of how well the stormwater system works in Lakewood Ranch, if (the water) can’t get off the property (because of inadequate engineering outside of Lakewood Ranch), it backs up like a toilet.” 

Looking downstream

Jensen’s team of engineers went straight to work Aug. 6 to locate any issues, which were then fixed within a matter of months after the storm. 

Even with the unprecedented amounts of rain Hurricane Debby dumped across the region (more than 16 inches in the Lakewood Ranch area), the engineers were baffled as to why the stormwater didn’t flow out of the Lakewood Ranch area. 

That same area of Summerfield flooded in the late 1990s, so an elaborate flood control system was installed near the intersection of Lakewood Ranch Boulevard and Hidden River Trail to prevent another incident. 

SMR originally had platted about 178 homesites for the area, but decided against it because of a “deep bend” in the river, which causes the water to slow down.

“Rather than develop these lots and create more potential for water to stack up, we thought why not turn these neighborhoods into a flood control mechanism,” Jensen said. 

There are three huge detention ponds, which work in unison to trap stormwater. 

The first pond on the east side of Lakewood Ranch Boulevard is divided in half by a spillway. Right now, one half looks nearly full, while the other half looks nearly empty. 

Water travels from the north side of that pond over the spillway, then passes underneath Lakewood Ranch Boulevard into the second pond, which spills into the third pond. Then, the water flows into the Braden River having bypassed the neighborhoods that flooded both in the 1990s and after Hurricane Debby.

Because the system showed no signs of a breach and had proved itself to work efficiently through similar rain events, the SMR team started looking downstream from Lakewood Ranch. 

Photo by Lesley Dwyer

The engineers examined two sets of Lidar data the Southwest Florida Water Management District collected in 2004 and in 2018. Lidar stands for Light Detection and Ranging. The technology measures ground elevations. 

Manatee County commissioners are currently trying to secure $1 million from the Legislature for a Lidar system to update flood maps of the Manatee River. 

Jensen said two blockages in the Braden River, downstream from Lakewood Ranch, were identified in the 2018 data that were not present in the data from 2004. Both are in the River Club, which also saw flooded homes after Hurricane Debby. 

The first impediment was found where River Club Boulevard crosses the Braden River. The Lidar data indicates there’s a build-up of sediment under the bridge. That spot is outside of Lakewood Ranch.

Data points collected in 2018 show that part of the embankment on the north side is 3 to 4 feet higher than it was in 2004. 

The second impediment was found near one of the holes on The River Club Golf Course. The data points show the river to be more narrow in 2018 than it was in 2004. 

Manatee County has not dredged the river since the data was collected. 

“It is our understanding that this portion of the Braden River has not been historically maintained by Manatee County,” reads an email from Manatee County Information Outreach Manager Bill Logan.

McCann said the county has been in touch with the Army Corp of Engineers because approval is required to dredge the river. Manatee County staff members said permits are not underway at this point and cannot be applied for until direction is given from the Manatee County Commission. 

That direction will likely come in March when commissioners will be asked to prioritize a list of projects that are eligible for a $252.7 million disaster grant the county was awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Quick fixes 

While Jensen can’t deal with problems in the River Club, he said issues SMR identified in Lakewood Ranch were fixed within a couple of months of Hurricane Debby. 

Jensen said that University Parkway, between Lorraine Road and Bourneside Boulevard, was flooded for a period of time and he said that was not "acceptable."

SMR worked with Manatee County to increase the size of the drainage inlets and change how they accept water. 

A home in the Shoreview neighborhood at Waterside Place was flooded because a stormwater pond was breached. There was a low spot at the top of the bank.

“Once the water starts to flow, you don’t stop it until the whole pond is back down,” Jensen said. “One house is not a minor thing, but it is fixed.”

Flooding in the Star Farms neighborhood, which did not actually flood any living areas as was initially thought, was an isolated issue that didn’t require work. 

It was more a matter of bad timing because the area was under construction. The Manatee County K-8 school being built nearby didn’t have any of its stormwater mechanisms in place yet, and some of the drains at Star Farms were covered with sandbags.

Sandbags are standard procedure to protect a stormwater system from being filled with construction dust and sediment after a rain event. 

Jensen said the rain predictions for Hurricane Debby were not high enough to warrant removing the sandbags.

He said he doesn't have concerns about Star Farms moving forward, but Summerfield Woods and Bluffs remains a concern because the River Club problems are out of his control.

"There are two problems here that I can't fix," he said. "So regardless of everything I have fixed, if this isn't fixed, it's possible that we're going to have the same situation again."