Homes flood in Gainesville's Weatherly neighorhood after heavy rains Sunday

The pumps recently installed to help reduce flooding in northwest Gainesville worked as expected following Sunday’s downpour. But one neighborhood not accustomed to flooding wasn’t so lucky.

The Weatherly subdivision off Northwest 23rd Avenue, just east of Fort Clarke Boulevard, suffered severe flooding Sunday night after residents say stormwater runoff from Tara Lane — an adjoining neighborhood currently under construction — spilled over into their retention pond and flooded streets and homes.

According to the National Weather Service in Jacksonville, the rain gauge at Gainesville Regional Airport recorded 2.29 inches of rain on Sunday. That same gauge showed that Gainesville received 7.26 inches of precipitation from Aug. 21 to 28.

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Marla and Jeffrey Lenz, who have lived in the Weatherly neighborhood for about five years with their son and daughter, were outside of their home Monday afternoon cleaning items and drying out rugs as the threat of more rain loomed.

The evening before, Marla Lenz said the family was eating dinner when their daughter went to leave the house.

“She said, ‘It’s flooding, it’s about to come in the front door!' " Marla Lenz said.

The family jumped into action, putting up barriers, including plywood, to help redirect the water.

"We were just bailing water out as fast as we could," Jeffrey Lenz said. "It’s just came rushing through and whipped around the corner."

Much of the mulch and some of the landscaping in their front yard was washed away. Irrigation pipes are now visible as well as the bottom of the driveway slab.

Their 10-year-old son spent his time during the flooding tubing down the street. On Monday he could be seen kayaking with friends in the neighborhood's retention pond.

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Tara Lane neighborhood

Marla Lenz attributed the flooding to the adjacent Tara Lane neighborhood, which is currently under construction. She said this is only the second time the neighborhood has flooded that she knows of, the first being last year after the land was cleared for the new neighborhood.

“We don’t have flood insurance because we were told when we bought the house it’s never flooded," she said.

Tara Lane is a 19-lot, single-family subdivision being built on just less than 5 acres directly west of Weatherly. The south side of the property includes a stormwater retention area, according to plans by Gainesville-based civil engineering firm EDA Consultants.

The home of Rebekah Ford and her mother, Debbie Kinman-Ford, who live next to the Lenz family, was lined with sandbags on Monday. Rebekah Ford said that around 7 p.m. Sunday, she heard a knock at the door.

"It was all of our fall decorations floating in the water just banging against the door," she said.

The water entered about a third of the home, according to Ford, soaking carpets and damaging walls. Water also came up through the home's foundation. A 2-foot watermark on the fence at the back of the property is clearly visible.

"The entire neighborhood's mulch is in our backyard now," Ford said.

She said the landlord plans to call a restoration service.

"This is the one time I'm grateful for renting as opposed to owning a house.," she said.

Ramon Gavarrete, the Alachua County Public Works director, said that construction issues at Tara Lane contributed to the flooding in Weatherly, and that his staff has communicated to the developer and contractor that they must fix the issue immediately.

“They better be addressing it now," Gavarrete said. "I’m going to ask them (staff) to continue to make sure that they follow up on it."

Hills of Santa Fe and Robin Lane

Recently installed pumps near the Hills of Santa Fe subdivision appeared to do its job despite flooding further west near the corner of Northwest 23rd Avenue and Northwest 98th Street.

"To fix the problem is millions and millions of dollars," Gavarrete said. "We are trying to minimize the flooding, and that's the word people should be using. Minimize the flooding."

Gavarrete said reports that the pumps not being activated were false, and that the primary pump has been running since Thursday. He said the secondary pump began running on Sunday.

Gavarrete also noted that the entrance to the Hills of Santa Fe was never inaccessible due to flooding, and that he has only received one report of water entering a home in the neighborhood, possibly a converted garage.

"In the previous instances the water would have gone into the entire house, not just the garage," he said.

The access road to Robin Lane, another neighborhood known for past flooding issues off Northwest 39th Avenue, once again flooded Sunday. But Gavarrete said the water was cleared in about three to four hours thanks to several pump improvements.

He compared that time frame to when Hurricane Irma passed through the area in September 2017 and when Tropical Storm Elsa hit in July 2021, which took a week and four days to pump the water out, respectively.

"In Robin Lane, there were absolutely no homes that got water in them," he said of Sunday's downpour.  "The pump installations in my opinion were a success. We minimized the flooding, which was the intention. And now we are just tweaking the systems to make them even better."

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Gainesville neighborhood flood in west Alachua County