25 neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale in line for flooding fix. Brace for a mess, critics warn.
Robin Richard says life hasn’t been the same since construction crews showed up to take on a much-needed but messy mission: Tearing up streets to upgrade drainage in her flood-prone Fort Lauderdale neighborhood.
She knew they were coming.
But she says she didn’t know a loud pump that runs 24 hours a day would be placed right outside the River Oaks home she shares with her husband, keeping them up at all hours of the night. She also didn’t know that several tall mangrove trees that line the canal across the street would be cut down. Or that gravel and dirt would be dumped in the same canal, turning 30 yards of the waterway into a messy construction zone.
“There used to be lots of fish in the canal and lots of birds,” Richard said. “Now there’s two bulldozers and a fence with yellow caution tape. I am at my wit’s end. At 5:45 a.m. I wake up to guys outside playing music. They’re smoking. They’re loud.”
The work usually begins at 7 a.m. on weekdays, but Richard says some workers show up more than an hour early, raring to go.
If you live in Fort Lauderdale, there’s a chance drainage crews will be coming to your neighborhood, too. The workers, outside contractors hired by the city, are coming to save the neighborhoods from another epic flooding scene like Fort Lauderdale saw on April 12, when 26 inches of rain fell in a matter of hours, turning roads into rivers and damaging more than 1,000 homes.
A total of 25 neighborhoods — all listed further down — are on the city’s drainage upgrade list, but flood-prone River Oaks and Edgewood were the first in line for what will end up being a $700 million investment over the next decade. The River Oaks/Edgewood project began in January 2022 and should be complete by December 2024, city officials say. But hundreds of homeowners will have to wait years for the crews to arrive. For some neighborhoods, the work won’t begin until 2031 and won’t be done until 2034.
When the crews do show up, it’s unlikely every resident is going to welcome them with open arms, Public Works Director Alan Dodd admits. That’s because each neighborhood will have its own challenges, with some folks feeling the pain a little or even a lot more than others.
“Every neighborhood is going to be different,” Dodd said. “Even within River Oaks, only certain sections were complaining about the impacts. Certain residents were impacted by the construction more than others because it’s all very close to people’s houses. And it has to be done in the streets. It has to be done in the middle of the neighborhoods.”
Facing complaints
Richard’s home is at the epicenter of a $50 million drainage project designed to protect River Oaks and neighboring Edgewood from intense rainstorms such as those that came in mid-April and again in mid-November.
“They live on the corner of hell,” said Ted Inserra, incoming president of the River Oaks Civic Association. “First they had the pump outside their house. And it was loud, going 24/7. Then they filled in the creek. And they chopped down the mangroves. They were great, mature trees. They’ll probably plant little saplings to replace them.”
The temporary pump, known as the “Silent Partner,” sat about 30 feet from Richard’s bedroom window for 10 months, from February through the end of October, right at the corner of Southwest 20th Street and Coconut Drive.
It was so loud, it broke Fort Lauderdale’s own noise laws — a fact confirmed by Dodd, who says the city took its own decibel readings after Richard and her husband complained. But under the city’s ordinance, infrastructure projects are not subject to noise laws, Dodd notes.
Still, the city did its best to make the “Silent Partner” a bit more silent.
“We built a box around the generator itself,” Dodd said. “And a couple feet away, we put up a wooden wall between the pump and their home lined with sound-absorbing materials. It did get to a reasonable level, but I don’t have numbers.”
Richard says she still had trouble sleeping from all the noise.
“That didn’t do anything,” she said of the temporary wall.
The pump, since moved to accommodate the drainage work, now sits about 100 feet away from Richard’s home.
Richard has another gripe, saying workers have left boots, shirts, pizza boxes and plastic water bottles outside her home overnight. Dodd says he hasn’t heard a word about it.
“We did have complaints about them leaving dirt on the road,” Dodd said of the work crews. “We have asked them to clean up. But it is a construction zone. If we were told they’re allowing trash and debris to build up, they would have been told to fix it.”
As for the canal that runs through River Oaks, Fort Lauderdale officials promise it will be restored.
Dodd says he expects the River Oaks contractor to completely restore the canal in the next month, sometime before Christmas.
The neighborhood, he says, will look like it did once again, but with better drainage.
All of the work done so far — filling in the canal, installing loud pumps, tearing up streets — was needed to finish the drainage project, Mayor Dean Trantalis said.
“We needed to get the job done,” Trantalis told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’s unfortunate that the mangrove trees became a casualty for the effort. We’ll do our best to restore the natural habitat.”
The canal, known to the neighborhood as a creek, looks nothing like it did before the bulldozers came. Kids used to swim there, Inserra says. Fathers used to fish. But no one is fishing or swimming these days.
‘Smells just horrendous’
Rows of drainage pipes and a field of grimy dirt covers up the space where water once flowed. On one side of a yellow tarp placed in the water to trap sediment, the canal’s water has turned a bright green.
Inserra first got word the canal was filled in when a neighbor sent him a post on the social media app NextDoor on Oct. 26.
Inserra’s response: “Oh hell no!!!! Heading down there now!!!!!”
In the past month, Inserra has posted several videos on social media complaining about the current state of the canal.
“This is what used to be our creek on Southwest 20 Street and Coconut Drive,” Inserra said in one post. “They completely filled it in. I hope you can see the color of this creek. It is lime green. Neon green. And smells just horrendous. I don’t know if I’d catch any fish out of this thing. I don’t know if there’s even any fish alive at this point.”
Dodd told the Sun Sentinel he and some of his staff attended neighborhood meetings to let the residents know what was coming.
But several residents say they had no idea the canal would be filled in.
Lisa Hoyt, whose home sits three blocks east of the canal, says she and her husband were shocked to see the canal partly filled in with dirt.
“I had no idea they were filling that creek in,” she said. “We’ve been to every association meeting and not once did they mention they were filling in the creek, even temporarily. Had they mentioned it, there would have been fireworks. It’s a mess.”
Dodd insists the city did tell the neighborhood what was coming and even brought a map to one of the association meetings to explain the project. But on Monday, he said many residents were on edge and might not have gotten the message.
Inserra remembers that map and said it required extensive explanation to understand unless you happen to have an engineering degree.
“Nobody understood what was on the map,” Inserra said. “And the guys explaining it made it even more confusing.”
Commissioner Warren Sturman, whose district includes the neighborhood, says the city has every intention of returning the canal to its original state.
Richard says the mangrove trees were tall enough to help hide the shipyard across the street. But now they’re gone. She’d like to see trees of the same height planted there again.
Under the county’s tree preservation code, trees can be planted in another location to mitigate for lost trees.
Sturman could not say what kind of trees would be planted to replace the mangroves, how tall the trees would be or even where they might be planted.
Sturman says he hopes to get more input from the neighborhood as the River Oaks project nears completion.
“My office is always striving to increase public input,” Sturman said. “And we will have more workshops as we go along.”
Mangroves gone
Dodd says Ric-Man Construction, the contractor hired to do the work in River Oaks, did not remove more mangroves than allowed under the permit.
The county disagrees.
In April, the county’s Environmental Permitting Division filed a notice of violation against Fort Lauderdale alleging its contractor dumped gravel into the canal and removed more mangroves than allowed under the permit.
An official with Ric-Man Construction declined to comment.
The county did approve a permit allowing the contractor to fill a portion of the canal with dirt in order to install two massive water-quality-control boxes, each measuring 10 feet by 10 feet with a height of 5 feet, Dodd said. But the gravel is another matter.
Dodd says the contractor was cited by the county for dumping the gravel but has since addressed the problem.
“The county told them you’re not allowed to do that and they had to fix it — and they did,” Dodd said.
Neither the city nor the county provided details on just how many mangrove trees were removed.
“They went beyond what they authorized to clear,” said David Vanlandingham, director of Broward’s Environmental Permitting Division. “We have pending enforcement against the city for all of those actions. We are still pursuing that enforcement, including the mangroves.”
Fines are possible and can run up to as much as $15,000 a day for the most egregious cases where parties fail to respond, Vanlandingham said.
Fort Lauderdale hired Ric-Man Construction to oversee the $50 million drainage project in Edgewood and River Oaks. But Ric-Man won’t be tapped to do the work in all 25 neighborhoods.
“It’s way too much work for any one company to do,” Dodd said. “All the neighborhoods will be going through a competitive bidding process. And we will be selecting whoever gives us the best price.”
Fort Lauderdale expects to spend $200 million installing and upgrading storm drains in eight neighborhoods that are part of the project’s first phase: River Oaks, Edgewood, Durrs, Dorsey-Riverbend, Progresso Village, Southeast Isles, Victoria Park and Melrose Manors/Riverland.
The next phase calls for spending $500 million to upgrade the flood infrastructure in the following 17 neighborhoods: Riverland Landings, Sailboat Bend, Tarpon River, Flagler Village, Harbor Isles/Inlet, Poinsettia Heights, South Middle River, Melrose Park, Shady Banks, Croissant Park, Middle River Terrace, Imperial Point, Lake Ridge, Riverland Manors/Woods, Chula Vista, Riverland Village and Lauderdale Isles.
Despite all the construction dust, some neighborhoods are anxious for drainage crews to arrive, Dodd says, especially after the record-breaking rainstorm that swept through town on April 12.
Said Dodd: “Now that we’ve gotten to the first two neighborhoods, the others are asking, ‘When are you going to get to us now?'”
Back to normal
As for Richard and her husband, they’re just praying for the project to end so life can get back to normal.
“They did tell us it was going to get worse before it got better,” Richard said of city officials. “It’s been an emotional rollercoaster. We have not had a good night’s sleep for a year. My yard is trashed. They tore down all of those mangroves and seven palms in front of my home.”
Despite the chaos, Richard and her husband have no plans to move.
“We love our home,” Richard said. “This is our forever home. I just want it to look beautiful again when they are done. I just want them to keep their promise that it will look nice again, that the canal will be flowing again, that my front yard is going to be back to where it was again.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan
