Council struggles with stormwater
The Fort Myers Beach town council held a special work session just to discuss stormwater – again.
On Friday, the council chambers were filled with both residents and engineers to engage in the conversation.
Public Works Director Scott Baker and Interim Town Manager Jim Steele didn’t have much new information to share, but presented similar information from past meetings to help council understand the state of stormwater management in the town.
While the council remained civil with both each other and staff, there was still a healthy level of skepticism about the data presented by town, county and Tetra Tech Engineering staff.
Baker listed the eight shared outfalls the town and county had agreed upon in the interlocal agreement in November and the critical upcoming dates for design, permitting and construction the council needed to keep in mind in order to stay on time with the county’s Estero Boulevard construction schedule.
These eight streets will be getting in-ground outfalls that will drain both Estero Boulevard and the streets’ stormwater into the Back Bay. Each system will include several sediment boxes which help to filter out sediments, oils and debris.
The streets are Eucalyptus, Jefferson, Hercules, Bayview, Bay, Donora, Connecticut and Bay Mar, and they were included on the interlocal agreement already, and have been specifically named before the council several times. According to Baker’s presentation, the first four outfall streets need to start construction at the beginning of May and the remaining four will need to start at the beginning of July.
Council Members Tracey Gore and Joanne Shamp and Mayor Dennis Boback were not happy with the selection and now feel they are in a “time crunch” to accept the eight streets, although it was not the first time the outfall streets have been presented.
“I’m concerned about the selection of the streets,” Shamp said. “I’m concerned with the streets around (Hercules) that have bigger problems. Why couldn’t this be put on a different street?”
The outfall proposed for Hercules Drive would include a seawall at the bay that would elevate the end of the street. Runoff would flow back into the stormwater system for sediment collection and treatment, rather than drain directly into the Bay. Draining runoff right into the Bay – which is what is happening now – contributes to water quality issues.
However, stormwater management is often confused with flooding management, and Hercules currently doesn’t flood regularly.
A Hercules resident, Diane Rogge, spoke during public comment against the design for her street.
“The problem is we are a very dry street, now if the baffle box fails or clogs, (the water) is going to come up the 20 inlets on Hercules,” she said.
Danny Nelson of Tetra Tech said a hot street that excessively floods does not make a good candidate for a shared outfall.
The shared outfalls have to be able to handle not only that individual street’s runoff but also the drainage coming from Estero Boulevard. In order to put a shared outfall on a “hot” street, the size of the pipe would have to be increased, and that brings about another set of more expensive issues.
Pipes bigger than a 30-inch diameter have to be more stringently monitored and maintained because they will dump more runoff into the Back Bay. The town has to monitor the island’s discharge annually to follow Natural Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) standards, which are regulated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and a bigger pipe would require more frequent monitoring.
“The more you have of a smaller size, the easier it is to meet the water quality requirements,” Nelson said. “We’ve found with even distribution of the flow and consistent pipe size, we should be getting equal treatment and not overloading one area.”
And just because a street doesn’t flood, doesn’t mean it’s exempt from needing to be included in the stormwater management system.
The county and Tetra Tech independently researched available survey data to pick out the eight outfalls as well as project potential shared outfalls for the rest of the island. In doing so, both groups were able to identify drainage basins on the island – the lowest areas of elevation, Nelson said.
So, Street X may not flood because during a rainstorm, stormwater runs from Street X to neighboring Street Y. Nelson said he couldn’t name specific streets without more data.
And the additional mechanism for retrieving more data was blocked by the town at a January meeting. Staff asked the council to approve a contract that would draw up 30 percent design plans for the rest of the island’s stormwater needs, giving staff the right information to go street by street at what streets needed it the most, what streets could fit swales instead of a pipe system, and what should be prioritized. However that design was halted by a 3-2 vote.
“I can’t tell them what they need to do,” Nelson said. “They’re going to have to tell us now. We offered a solution and they didn’t want to go forward.”
Baker said the 30 percent plan was a crucial part of moving the stormwater project forward. Boback questioned the need to look at every street, and Baker said it provided a tool to make actual construction decisions in the future of what – or if – a system was needed and where.
Shamp said the town and its residents needed to look at alternative methods of reducing stormwater runoff – such as impervious surface – and encourage property owners to take responsibility for their input to the stormwater system.
“When you pave the entire front of your property, you’re contributing,” she said.
She also said more maintenance should be put in the town’s current stormwater system – swales that have been filled in should be dug out again, for example.
Baker agreed – but said the problem arose from the fact that the town “never did a maintenance program” for its stormwater.
“(Stormwater) was a redheaded stepchild, nationally. Just put a pipe in the ground and dump it somewhere,” he said. “If the town did what they should have done years ago and maintained the system…once or twice a year, we try to clean up, we empty the catch basins quarterly. We have limited money.”