A proposed 18-inch-high berm, which would cost about $17,000 to build, may help business owners along Vollmer Avenue.
By MEGAN SCOTT
Published May 30, 2003
OLDSMAR - Richard Mueller has signed the lease, bought almost a quarter-million dollars' worth of equipment and is nearly ready to start making paper products at Chief Packaging Inc.
There's just one problem.
Chief Packaging's building is on Vollmer Avenue in an industrial park, an area that in the last year has become prone to flooding.
During heavy rains earlier this year, Mueller found the building's parking lot and loading dock completely covered with water.
"You couldn't access the building," said Mueller, president of Chief Packaging. "It didn't go in the building; but with more rain, it might. We need to ship every day. If you can't put a truck in the loading dock, you're basically shut down."
Pinellas County and Oldsmar officials have come up with at least a temporary solution to the problem: a proposed 18-inch-high berm that would stretch about 1,000 feet from Vollmer Avenue toward the retention pond at the new office complex being built for Nielsen Media Research. The berm would cost about $17,000 and take about 45 days to complete, said John Bishop, Oldsmar's city engineer.
Pinellas County officials last week agreed to supply the dirt for the berm, and Harrod Properties, the developer of Nielsen Media Research, will design and build it. Oldsmar will absorb some of the costs. The figures haven't been broken down, Bishop said.
"We're trying to work with everyone making sure the businesses and property owners in the city aren't unduly being flooded," he said. "We all know there's a problem. We're all cooperating in a joint venture to take care of this."
The area never had a problem with flooding before last year, said Mueller, who also runs Osgood Industries on Burbank Road with his brother, Martin Mueller. Osgood Industries has been operating in Oldsmar for 18 years.
That's because storm water has historically drained to the east and north. But with the construction of Forest Lakes Boulevard, Nielsen Media Research and Brooker Creek Boulevard, water now flows south: straight onto Vollmer Avenue.
"No one has been adversely affected," said John Vollmer, who owns the land on Vollmer Avenue, some of it still undeveloped. "But when it rains this summer, you're going to have a huge problem that you're walking into. My fear is this summer we're going to have flooding."
Richard Nelson has the same fear. His company, Auto-Kinetics Inc., manufactures conveyors. Those machines don't do well in water, he said.
During a December rain, the water across Vollmer Avenue was 2 feet deep and covered the road into the parking lot. The flooding was so bad that his employees could not park their cars without wading through the water.
"Our concerns were not so much that the building was going to flood because of the way the drainage was built, it was that our employees could not come to work," said Nelson, who has been on Vollmer Avenue for about five years.
Vollmer and Mueller aren't convinced that a berm is the answer. Both said it is putting a Band-Aid on the problem. Vollmer would have to give officials permission to construct the berm across his property, and he said he's not convinced yet.
"It's not really my fault," Vollmer said. "I'm this little guy who owns a few acres. In a sense, they're going to use my property to solve the problem."
Jim Pleso, an engineer for Pinellas County public works transportation, said when Vollmer Avenue was built in the late 1980s, the city did not require environmental permits to build the street.
"We believe it was built at an elevation too low," Pleso said. "That's where the whole problem really lies."
Mueller blames the flooding on the new Forest Lakes Boulevard. When county officials built the extension, they put the storm sewer about a foot higher than the storm sewer on Vollmer Avenue.
Pleso said there will be a second phase to the project that will re-establish the original flow patterns, which could include lowering the storm sewer on Forest Lakes Boulevard or redoing some of the existing drainage systems. Ripping out the road and replacing it would be too costly, he said.
Pleso was hesitant to put a time frame on how long construction of the berm would take. Harrod Properties must first apply to the Southwest Florida Water Management District for a permit. Swiftmud has agreed to expedite approval of that permit.
