Posted on March 6, 2023
Imagine living in a low-lying neighborhood so flood-prone that you have to worry about barricading your home with sandbags and fleeing for higher ground every time there’s a tropical storm – or even just really heavy rainfall – headed your way.
For many decades, that’s been the anxiety-filled reality for thousands of people who live between Nova Road and the Halifax River.
On Wednesday night, just five months after dozens of those urban core residents had to be rescued out of their homes as Tropical Storm Ian blasted through the city, some of the best possible news was announced.
Congress has approved spending $3 million to fully fund a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works study that will jumpstart planning and design for critical stormwater and flood protection projects in Daytona Beach.
The even better news is the approval for that funding and the study all but guarantees there will be tens of millions of dollars more coming out of Washington, D.C., for projects that will help restore and rebuild Daytona Beach’s infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of flooding.
After Mayor Derrick Henry received a phone call Tuesday letting him know the long-hoped-for flooding study was finally going to be tackled, and at no cost to the city, he said he closed his office door, prayed for a few minutes and shed a couple tears as he thanked God.
Henry said the study and flood prevention projects will be “transformational” for Daytona Beach.
“This is probably the most important thing that has ever come from this commission,” the mayor said at Wednesday’s City Commission meeting.
Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, who has been battling to get the study funding lined up for years, got the honor of being the first to let everyone at the City Hall meeting know that relief is on the horizon.
“Hurricanes Ian and Nicole were devastating to Florida’s coastal infrastructure from our beaches and dunes to our coastal armoring,” said Waltz, who spoke from Washington, D.C., via a Zoom link during the meeting. “Northeast Florida has been left vulnerable and unprotected. To help address these damages head on, I was proud to secure this funding and begin the process to rebuild our stormwater and flooding infrastructure.”
‘We just didn’t take no for an answer’
Daytona Beach, state and federal leaders have been trying for 15 years to line up funding for an Army Corps of Engineers flood mitigation study. When Gov. Ron DeSantis represented Florida’s 6th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018, he also got in the fight.
Waltz took over the 6th congressional post right after DeSantis, and he’s been doing what he can behind the scenes. Among other things, every year Waltz has been sending letters to the Office of Management and Budget and Army Corps of Engineers asking for the Daytona Beach study to be approved and funded.
“We just didn’t take no for an answer,” said Waltz, a former member of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets. “We kept pounding it through.”
While Waltz received a round of applause and many thank-yous for getting the funding approval over the finish line, others ranging from city staff members to the head of the local branch of the NAACP were recognized for their assistance. Henry also singled out City Commissioner Stacy Cantu for her tenacious lobbying of Waltz and his staff.
“Commissioner Cantu has a way of sinking her teeth into an issue and shaking it like a rabid pit bull,” Henry said. “That is a high compliment. Sometimes in elected life and public life it takes that.”
Even with all of that effort, that Daytona Beach was chosen is a feat. Only about a half-dozen such projects nationwide are selected for funding each year, Waltz said.
The city made its first big push to tackle the flooding problem in 2009, when more than 20 inches of rain fell over a six-day period and 790 structures were damaged.
A report recommended a regional solution with a total bill of $100 million. Unable to pull together money for a study much less $100 million, the city started asking Congress for help every year. Congress approved Daytona Beach’s project under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act in 2016, but no promises for funding were attached.
The city was willing to put up $1.5 million for the $3 million study, and had made requests in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., for the other $1.5 million every year since 2009.
But now the city doesn’t even have to find $1.5 million. The federal government is providing all $3 million for the study.
And because the $3 million is being allocated all at once, the study will probably be completed more quickly and improvements can get under construction faster. The study should begin this spring, Waltz said.
“Typically you only get $1 million per year,” said Waltz, who in November won a third two-year term representing the congressional district that includes Volusia and Flagler counties.
Tackling Midtown’s chronic flooding
Once the Army Corps of Engineers makes the decision to do a study, it’s “almost certain” to follow up with a project, Waltz said. And even after a project is completed, the Corps stays involved with maintenance and repairs for decades, he said.
While federal dollars are likely to flow into Daytona Beach for flood prevention construction, the city is also going to have to come up with some non-federal contributions for projects, Waltz said.
The federal funding is a huge relief for Daytona Beach. Just a few months ago, City Manager Deric Feacher said the city might have to consider a temporary tax to raise the money for the study and get things moving.
Flood mitigation projects in New Orleans have cost more than $14.5 billion. Estimates for the work needed in Daytona Beach “run in the hundreds of millions,” Henry said.
The Midtown and Fairway Estates neighborhoods east of Nova Road are in a low-lying area that mostly sits about five to six feet above sea level. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood elevation is around eight feet above sea level, and only buildings that sit at that eight-foot threshold or higher stayed dry inside during Tropical Storm Ian.
The Midtown-area topography is like a bowl, and much of the neighborhood sits on the bottom of the bowl that has its highest rims on Ridgewood Avenue and Clyde Morris Boulevard.
When enough water comes pouring down from the sky and the more elevated surrounding areas, sandbags, pumps, retention ponds and the Nova Canal that runs along the west side of Midtown quickly lose the fight.
It’s happened in the historically Black community again and again, for many decades. The crushing poverty throughout Midtown and its already beat-up homes and businesses make recovery especially hard.
City Commissioner Paula Reed lives in Midtown, and she’s haunted by some of the flooding stories her neighbors have shared with her. During Tropical Storm Ian, one woman said when she opened her door to check out the screams of people outside, floodwater rushed into her house.
Another woman who had rising water inside her home put her newborn baby in a high cabinet to keep the infant safe while she searched for her toddlers, Reed said.
“We have endured so much, so much,” Reed said.
Water will seek the lowest spot
Some people blame the Nova Canal for Midtown’s flooding because the open ditch that runs along the neighborhood’s western edge also tops its banks during heavy, unrelenting rain.
The state-controlled Nova Canal runs from Ormond Beach south to Port Orange. It has offshoot pipes along its multi-city corridor that reach to the river and release water – when the Halifax doesn’t rise so much that it blocks that outflow.
“The Nova Canal has capacity problems when the rainfall is so intense that it causes flooding in Midtown, but I don’t know that it’s causing the flooding,” Assistant City Manager Andrew Holmes said last fall. “I think it (the canal) needs to be looked at, and it might be part of the solution, but I don’t think it’s the cause of all our flooding.”
Midtown’s main flooding foe is simply low elevation, Holmes said.
“In Midtown the land is very low and very flat, so the water tends to accumulate in the low areas,” Holmes said. “It doesn’t have as much to do with the piping system or the drains or the pipes in the road that drain the road in a normal rainfall event, because that in a flood is all well under water.”
Diverting the water to the municipal golf course or adding more retention ponds might help, but not when the river is so high that the outflow pipes are underwater, he said.
Holmes said he can’t speculate on what might finally relieve flooding in Midtown.
“It’s $3 million of work to get those answers,” he said, referring to the study cost.
The ultimate solution will have to be a regional system since water doesn’t stop at city borders, he said.
