Posted on March 17, 2025
SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. – The recovery process is still ongoing for many Suncoast residents after last August’s downpour during Hurricane Debby.
“A lot of people are still not in their homes seven months after. They’re still waiting for permits and construction to happen,” said Sarasota resident Nadia Bowen.
Bowen lives in Sarasota’s South Gate community, which was hit hard thanks in large part to its proximity to the Phillippi Creek.
And now less than three months out from the next hurricane season, Bowen says she and her neighbors are on high alert.
“People are scared, people are really scared,” Bowen said.
But residents got a reason to be optimistic as the county expressed interest in expanding their dredging operations at a meeting on Wednesday.
The county’s initial plan was to dredge the creek from just east of U.S. 41 to the bay, but now, staff is looking at dredging further inland to Beneva Road.
“We are optimistic that it can get started by this summer, but there is still a lot of work to get done to say a formal determination of the end time,” said Sarasota County Public Works Director Spencer Anderson.
Despite uncertainty on how much can get done before hurricane season, Anderson says their goal is to do targeted work on some of the more worrisome portions over the next few months.
“One of the concerns right now is there’s high level of sedimentation in certain areas that’s choking off some of that lower-level flow. That’s one of the things we will be working to take a look at, in addition to the overall dredge, to see if there’s some emergency dredge activities we could do in order to make sure there is an open channel all the way through before storm season hits,” Anderson said.
