Town walks through construction concerns on Aberdeen
Nobody likes construction, but some streets are more difficult than others.
Last Friday, Town staff held a public walk-through to address some unique concerns residents have raised on Aberdeen, Dundee, and Lauder.
The neighborhood has been the site of a stormwater design dispute since last summer, when a property owner advocated for a change of plans.
One design, which was already permitted, had the pipes go down Aberdeen, cut across Lauder, and turn up Dundee street, draining into the bay off Dundee.
“Of course, everyone said the only thing to do is just go straight down Aberdeen, because we already have a pipe there, so we need to just widen that,” said Georgia Shakti-Hill, who lives at the corner of Lauder and Dundee.
But according to Town Manager Roger Hernstadt, it’s not that simple, because they would need to widen the existing pipe from 24 to 30 inches.
“The problem is that utility easement we own there is not wide enough. And, while an owner might give us a bigger one, that person happens to have a structure over that easement, so we’d have to knock down that structure,” he said.
The structure, a boathouse, is non-conforming, meaning the property owner would not be able to get a permit from the town to do any construction on it under current code, and if it was torn down, it would not be allowed to be rebuilt.
Hernstadt said they didn’t expect the owner to grant the town permission to demolish the boathouse under these circumstances.
“Dundee has an outlet right behind our home, and into the canal, and then it has two outlets at the end of Dundee. So perfect, never floods,” Shakti-Hill said.
She claimed that engineers did not account for these outlets at the end of Dundee, and based their plan off incorrect information.
Brett Messner, an engineer from TetraTech, has refuted that claim.
“We’ve known about those outfalls the entire time,” he said.
Dundee is a “donor street” – a dry street that can handle the extra flow from Estero Boulevard where wetter streets can’t.
“If the street’s already flooded, then you’re adding the water coming off Estero Boulevard to that street. The pipe’s not going to be big enough, so you have to go to donor streets, which are your dry streets, to handle that pipe to take the overflow from Estero and the units that flood,” said Councilmember Dennis Boback.
Last summer, the Town put the two design options to a vote, sending out surveys to 36 residents regarding their preferred plan.
The survey told residents that the alternative plan would have removed upgrades to the water and storm drainage system on Lauder and Dundee, and widened the pipe on Aberdeen instead.
Twenty of them responded, with the votes split evenly.
When the results were brought to Town Council at a planning meeting last September, a consensus was reached to continue with the original design.
Town Manager Roger Hernstadt told council that permitting the alternative plan with the South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers would result in long delays for the entire project.
At the end of January, surveyors tagged items in the right-of-way on Aberdeen, Lauder, and Dundee streets that would need to be removed.
Among these were some of Shakti-Hill’s live oak trees, which are protected by law.
Kaye Molnar, spokesperson for the project, said not everything that’s tagged gets removed, and they do their best to work around trees.
“In the time we have been doing this, the only trees we have taken out of the right-of-way have been on Connecticut. They were actually dead to begin with,” she said.
Last Friday, Town staff met with the contractors, engineers, and nearly 25 residents at a walk-through of the neighborhood to identify what had to be removed.
The Town hired Phil Buck, an arborist, to assess the oak trees.
“We don’t want to trim more than we have to,” he said, advising minimal cuts to the trees’ limbs.
He said that pruning the trees would not affect their health, and that some already showed signs of rot.
But Shakti-Hill still has concerns for her trees, and has reached out to the Live Oak Society for help.
She wants to have the street defined as a Live Oak Sanctuary, and she hopes to do it before construction on the stormwater pipes begins this summer.
Across the street from Shakti-Hill and her oaks, Robert Rodriguez struggles with a garage built on low ground that floods during heavy rains.
He asked what could be done to help his situation, and was pleased with the way the contractors answered his questions at the walk-through.
“It was very informational,” he said.
Hernstadt sees the construction – and the unrest that comes with it – as part of the town’s growing pains.
“We’re upgrading the infrastructure of the town for the next 75 years,” he said.
“My street is being worked on, and my car is dirty, you know, but it’s not the end of the world…it’s just part of the town growing up.”
Construction on Aberdeen’s waterlines has already begun, with stormwater improvements set to begin in the neighborhood this summer.