- October 14, 2024
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After Hurricane Ian flooded Woodland-area streets, residents voiced concerns about how the city handles stormwater in the neighborhood.
The Woodlands butts up against the Graham Swamp trailhead area, which takes stormwater runoff from the canals west of Interstate 95. During heavy rain, the water eventually overflows and backs up into roads and yards.
Donald Schrager, Palm Coast’s deputy director of stormwater, said runoff is high because of the way the city was designed: Water from the west side of I-95 pours into canals and ditches, which eventually lead into Graham Swamp and then into the Intracoastal Waterway.
But these canals and ditches, Schrager said, are not designed to handle 500-year rain events like Hurricane Ian.
“It’s like the bucket example,” he said. “If you pour all the water into a sink slowly, it will drain fine. But if you pour it all at once, it doesn’t.”
Ralph and Ivette Esposito, who live in the 40 block of Black Alder Drive, had standing water in the road and in their back yard for days after the storm. Ralph Esposito said that when he came home after evacuating, the whole street was covered in water.
Ivette Esposito said there was more water in the neighborhood from Ian than there had been from Hurricane Irma, in 2017.
“We were very lucky it spread instead of going up,” Ivette Esposito said on Oct. 1.
Shraeger said that before Ian arrived in Palm Coast, the city had drained the canals in anticipation of the downpour, emptying as much water as possible into the Intracoastal.
Another Woodlands resident, Alejandro Figueroa Morales, was driving down Old Kings Road during the storm to check on his parents when he passed over a culvert with water seemingly rushing from I-95 into Graham Swamp.
He recorded a short clip of the rushing water and shared the video on a private Woodlands community Facebook page.
His fellow Woodlands residents were concerned that the clip showed water draining from I-95 directly into their backyards.
But Schrager said that wasn’t the case.
The water, he said, came from the L-4 canal pipes just south of the P Section on the west side of I-4.
The pipes — which are being expanded — were overwhelmed by the amount of water.
Schrager said the water overflowed from the L-4 canals into undeveloped land between Old Kings Road and I-95, which then drained into the culvert and Graham Swamp.
When asked why the L-4 pipes and culverts with similar issues, like those at Colbert Lane and Blare Drive, had not been fixed sooner after Hurricane Irma, Schrager said that the upgrades are a slow process when every project is important.
In the meantime, he said, he’s just glad the water did not get into people’s houses.
“We learn from every rain event,” Schrager said. “Just because a system works now doesn’t mean we can’t make it better.”
