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Cities can learn from past building errors

Largo's recent experience illustrates why governments need strict regulations to prevent construction of buildings in the floodplain of a creek or in spots that have traditionally held water after a storm.

Largo will soon be shelling out $127,500 to buy and tear down one small, 825-square-foot home on 19th Place SW that has flooded repeatedly in heavy rains. The house sits in an area where rainwater collects. The price tag for building a drainage system to funnel water away from the area was prohibitive, so the city is pursuing the cheaper option of buying the home.

The city has had to resort to similar purchases of property along McKay Creek because the homes flooded when the creek rose, as creeks are wont to do.

Largo isn't the only North Pinellas local government that has turned to buying homes that flood frequently, finally conceding the battle to Mother Nature.

In 2001, Clearwater purchased an entire mobile home park that had been developed in the 1960s on what had been a natural wetland along Alligator Creek. Development around the creek was forcing rainwater to flow into other areas of east Clearwater. The residents of the 200 mobile homes in the Friendly Village of Kapok were moved out and the city began work to return that low-lying area to its natural function of holding and filtering rainwater.

It was a costly solution that all Clearwater residents had to help pay for through higher stormwater utility fees.

In the 1990s, Clearwater launched a multifaceted program, including the purchase of some homes in low-lying areas, to end repeated flooding of properties in the Druid Road area of west Clearwater. Homes had been built all along the natural floodplain of Stevenson's Creek, and when the water rose, many of those homes were at risk of flooding or interfered with the natural flow of rainwater.

The city's current conversion of the old Glen Oaks Golf Course into a water management area is another part of that same plan. Residents who pass by the property on Court Street will see that the new ponds sculpted from the earth are already filling with water.

Dunedin and Pinellas County have spent considerable time and money since 2000 studying flooding and water quality problems along Curlew Creek. Dunedin residents' stormwater utility fees have been going up, in part to pay to address the problems along Curlew Creek, which is surrounded by dense development at risk of flooding.

Current officials are not responsible for the mistakes that allowed construction in these areas. Those mistakes were made decades ago as people naturally gravitated toward the beauty of the county's meandering creeks and considered the creek banks perfect home sites. No government stepped in then to prevent development. Today's residents now must pay the price to return those creek floodplains and wetland areas to their natural functions.

As officials struggle to find the funding to fix these problems and grapple with the political fallout when they must displace residents, it is hoped they are absorbing the lesson that you can't fight Mother Nature. They must modify their land use maps and land development regulations to make sure that one day, developers won't be able to return to the creek floodplains and start building again.

[Last modified August 24, 2005, 01:15:20]