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Veteran fighting for a better lot

When it rains, the parking lot shrinks, cutting the bingo attendance at the Disabled American Veterans chapter.

By DAN DeWITT
Published July 20, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Lou Mazzarella is a fighter, who earned a Purple Heart as a soldier in the Pacific theater during World War II.

His current battle is with every public agency he thinks might be responsible for the flooding of the parking lot at Disabled American Veterans Chapter 67 south of State Road 50.

"They don't want to hear my name anymore," said Mazzarella, 84, the former chapter commander. "I don't blame them, either, because I'm on their tail."

He has written to a half-dozen elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Crystal River, and Gov. Jeb Bush, who "was the first one to answer," Mazzarella said.

His complaint, one the DAV has been pressing for years, is that water flowing under SR 50 from a nearby culvert regularly floods the chapter's parking lot.

On Monday, a puddle and dusty residue left from recent heavy rains covered more than 70 parking spaces.

The flooding has been devastating to revenue from the chapter's three-times-a-week bingo games, especially those held on Saturday night, said Mazzarella and another member of the chapter, Robert Collins.

These Saturday games can raise as much as $2,000 for charities such as a patients' fund at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center in Tampa.

But with regular players staying away because of the flooding, the chapter has lost money on three of the recent Saturday night games, they said.

Last week, for example, it took in $300, while the estimated cost of staging a game is $800, Mazzarella said.

State and county officials said they sympathize and would like to help.

The only problem, they say, is that the parking lot has always flooded.

The DAV chapter's complaints date back to 1970, said Dwayne Kile, the design engineer for the state Department of Transportation district based in Tampa.

The chapter said the problem worsened in 1994, when the road was widened to four lanes.

In 2001, after storms caused repeated floods, the department widened the ditches on either side of the highway that hold flood water.

Maintenance crews spent several weeks on the project and increased the capacity of nearby ditches by more than 37,000 yards, Kile said.

The department has no immediate plans to do more because the DAV parking lot is in a basin where water has historically collected and percolated into the aquifer.

"They're at the bottom of the bowl," Kile said.

When the Southwest Florida Water Management District, or Swiftmud, issued a permit for the paving of the parking lot in 1996, according to records in the file, it did so with the understanding that the lot floods during heavy rains.

The DAV chapter apparently agreed to this, Kile said.

"There's nothing (in Swiftmud rules) saying you can't flood yourself," he said.

That's true, Mazzarella said, but he just didn't think it would flood so often. He also said the problem has become worse recently, possibly because the county is installing utility lines in the right of way.

"This isn't occasional flooding. This is all the time," he said. "It used to be it flooded after 3 inches of rain. Now it's 1 inch."

State Rep. David Russell, R-Brooksville, is one of the elected officials to whom Mazzarella wrote. He is familiar with the problem and talked to the Transportation Department about it.

"If there's anything that can be done to alleviate the problem, I'm sure DOT is going to do it," Russell said.

Such responses were typical of those he received, Mazzarella said. While he and Collins said they appreciated them, they were hoping for more.

"Referrals are good. Pressure is better: You either support this thing or we'll lay off your funding next year. That makes it well understood," Collins said.

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352754-6116.

[Last modified July 20, 2005, 00:57:15]