- November 18, 2024
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As part of its plan to widen Bulldog Drive near Flagler Palm Coast High School, the city drained four ponds surrounding the campus. The resulting drawn-down water level revealed extensive erosion and damage to the 14-year-old pipes. At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Director of Plant Services Walt Fischer lobbied for emergency repairs that could cost county schools $471,000, according to bids already solicited.
Expediting the issue is the fact that the ponds will likely be refilled within a couple months as the road project concludes. If that happens, the schools will foot an additional bill for re-draining them.
“The time-sensitive part is that we take advantage of the water being drawn down by the city to do the repairs,” board chairman Andy Dance said.
FPC — built adjacent to Graham Swamp — is prone to drainage problems, an issue that could snowball with collapsed pipes.
“Well, you’re going to have continued separation of the structures, continued erosion over the banks, and then the piping is in the condition that it’s in,” Fischer said of potential consequences if the issue is not immediately addressed. “It needs to be repaired.”
Any remedy would entail a several-step process.
“The repair of the entire situation will require that the pond banks be re-graded, that the outfall structures at the ends of those pipes either be reset, reinforced, or replaced,” Fischer said. “As far as the interconnecting pipes between the ponds, that’ll be dug up.”
An engineer’s report has already been issued; it suggests replacing existing structures with concrete piping, Fischer said.
Board member Trevor Tucker asked about the rate of erosion and damage, noting that a glacial pace would buy the board more time to conceive the right solution.
“If it took 14 years to do this damage, could we be good for a few more years the way it is?" he said. "To me, it seems that we're jumping into this really fast and we don’t know. Next year, it might just be an inch more."
“That’s a good question,” Fischer replied.
The board motioned to table the issue until the next meeting in two weeks, citing concerns over bids and a desire to read an engineer’s report.
“It feels like we just went to two (contractors) and said, ‘hey guys give us some bids,’ and I don’t feel like that’s appropriate for this project,” board member Colleen Conklin said.
The board wasn’t ready to allocate nearly half a million dollars without first seeing some research.
“You have two weeks to give us enough information to keep this moving forward,” Dance told Fischer.
