DAYTONA BEACH — For more than 100 years, when it's rained heavily enough and long enough, a low-lying area east of Nova Road has transformed into a lake with houses, apartment buildings and businesses jutting out.
Could levees, floodwalls, more reservoirs, additional pumps and new berms help? How about raising structures off the ground, creating underground retention, deepening channels, increasing backflow prevention, and establishing a flood warning system?
For the past four months, those ideas have been explored by a team of engineers, biologists, geologists, hydrologists, surveyors, archaeologists, economists, planners, real estate specialists and an environmental justice coordinator.
They're working together on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood risk management feasibility study to come up with recommendations aimed at reducing the repeated inundation of the Midtown and Fairway Estates neighborhoods between Orange Avenue and Beville Road.
They still have 18 months before they're due to make final recommendations, but several people working on the three-year study gave city commissioners the first public update on their progress at Wednesday night's City Commission meeting.
In January, city commissioners voted unanimously to partner with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the $3 million study that's being fully funded by the federal government. The hope is the study will convince Congress to approve and help pay for a project that could greatly alleviate the catastrophic flooding Midtown and Fairway Estates have suffered again and again.
Working to reduce flooding in the study area as much as possible are engineers in Daytona Beach's Utilities Department, and Army Corps employees based in Jacksonville, Savannah and Mobile. Numerous state and federal agencies will also be consulted.
"We've known for a long time we have a water problem, and we don't have the answer," Mayor Derrick Henry said at Wednesday night's meeting.
"You now have a partner. You're not alone," replied Jim LaGrone, who's with the Army Corp's Jacksonville District and serves as a project manager for flood risk management projects, coastal protection and the restoration of navigation waterways.
Why Midtown and Fairway Estates flood
The study area is bordered by Nova Road, Orange Avenue, Ridgewood Avenue and Beville Road. The low-lying, bowl-shaped topography of the area has made the southern end of the Midtown neighborhood and the Fairway Estates neighborhood vulnerable to water rising as high as three or four feet during especially heavy rainstorms and tropical storms.
The two neighborhoods are on a low point between Clyde Morris Boulevard and Ridgewood Avenue, and they sit low relative to the Halifax River.
The area drains to the Nova Canal and then the Halifax River, but that drainage system doesn't work during large rainfall events when the river is high. The result is water settling in low-lying areas adjacent to the canal.
Another challenge is that the Nova Canal's outfalls to the river are located within Holly Hill and South Daytona. And the Navy Canal, which runs from Daytona Beach's airport to Nova Road, discharges into the Nova Canal around the Midtown area, which adds to the flooding.
It adds up to a problem that could cost between $100 million and $200 million to fix.
Daytona Beach has a greatly improved chance of getting federal funding for a project since Congress agreed to pick up the full $3 million tab for the study, a rarity. But there are no guarantees federal construction money will ever be approved, or how fast that could happen even if the city is given assistance.
It took Daytona Beach from 2009 until 2016 to get approval for the Army Corps flooding study, and the money wasn't allocated for a study until 2023.
If Congress authorizes a U.S. Army Corps flooding project in Daytona Beach at some point, getting funding for that will be an additional hurdle. If all of that falls into place, the federal government would probably pick up 65% of costs, and the city would have to come up with the remaining 35%.
Where things go from here
Army Corps officials are exploring nearly two dozen alternatives to reduce flooding, and they've already decided against one idea on their list: underground storage. They concluded that would be prohibitively expensive and ineffective given the area's high water table.
Ideas still being studied include buying out property, raising berms and adding a surge barrier.
They'll continue to evaluate the alternatives over the next year, and by June of 2025 the study team will agree on a tentatively selected plan.
By December 2025, the Army Corps will endorse a recommended plan for flood mitigation in the two neighborhoods. In June of 2026, two years from now, the plan will be ready for state and agency review.
The study's final step will come in January of 2027, when the final report is due. The U.S. Army Corps' headquarters will develop what they call the chief's report, which will recommend a specific project presented for congressional authorization.
Between now and submission of the final study recommendations, there will be more public updates and meetings.
Residents will be able to talk to engineers, economists, biologists and plan formulators during two meetings on July 16. The meetings will be held at 2 and 6 p.m. in the Dickerson Community Center's gym, located at 308 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
There will be more study updates during City Commission meetings Sept. 18; Dec. 18; March 12, 2025; and June 11, 2025.
Del Cabeche, the environmental justice coordinator for the Army Corp's Jacksonville District, said he'll make sure people in affected communities stay informed, involved and have their voices heard.
Members of the study group have already met with Daytona Beach city government officials as well as officials with Volusia County's government, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach International Airport, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and the state Department of Transportation.
A complex problem
Woven into the study group's evaluations will be estimations of how new systems would hold up over the next 50 years, how much improvements would cost to build and maintain, and how the environment would be impacted.
Engineers involved in the study have learned the Nova Canal that runs parallel to Nova Road is the main drainage system for that area. There are three main outfalls for the Nova Canal that send storm water to the Halifax River, but they're all north or south of Midtown and Fairway Estates.
Flooding in those two low-elevation neighborhoods can also be exacerbated by high tide raising the river and blocking rainwater trying to flow into the Halifax. Expected sea level rise in the years ahead will also have to be factored into projections where floodwater will settle in the future if various changes are tackled.
"This adds a lot of complexity to the study," said Jason LaVecchia, a civil engineer with the Corps' Savannah District. "This one's a doozy."
Read more:Major step taken toward solving Midtown Daytona's flooding problems with study approval
LaGrone agreed that it's a difficult project, but he said that challenge can be fun.
"We're not going to give up," LaGrone said. "We'll do the best we can."
You can reach Eileen at Eileen.Zaffiro@news-jrnl.com
