City Council resiliency panel starting look at Jacksonville flooding

Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)

Jacksonville City Council members will start meeting Monday about how the city can manage flooding better despite rising sea levels, climate change and growing neighborhoods.

The Special Committee on Resiliency is expected to report by the end of June on policies to help neighborhoods across the city that have been increasingly waterlogged in recent years.

"After six ... months of meetings, we've got to have some proposals that we can pass," said Councilman Matt Carlucci, who chairs the seven-member committee.

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Monday, the committee will hear from an engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who has worked on projects involving sea level rise for more than a decade and from the administrator of the Florida Resilient Coastlines Program at the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Heads of the city's planning and public works departments, scientists from the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University and representatives from the St. Johns Riverkeeper organization are scheduled to be part of later meetings, currently scheduled monthly.

In a memo creating the committee this month, Council President Scott Wilson left room for members to look into environmental, land use or infrastructure policies, but said the results must have "definitive, practical action plans."

"I recognize there are issues with our flooding and our need for making Jacksonville a more resilient place," Wilson, who is a committee member, said during a meeting with Carlucci about the panel's work. "I've seen water rise in Pottsburg Creek like I've never seen in my lifetime. I recognize there's a need for solutions."

Besides higher water levels, new construction can be complicating drainage problems, too, despite elaborate requirements for developers to control any rainwater flowing from their subdivisions. Some observers have suggested that years of development may have consumed isolated wetlands that weren't heavily protected but still helped to absorb some rainwater.

Duval County's population, estimated at about 950,000 people in 2018, had grown by about 85,000 since 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Also, because builders have offset environmental damage to wetlands by paying operators of wetland mitigation banks in relatively rural areas, widespread use of those banks may be protecting big wetland tracts without helping the drainage in developed areas where the isolated wetlands are becoming rarer.

The council has looked before at steps to limit flooding, getting mixed outcomes from proposals developed after months of meetings by city committees.

For example, it passed legislation last year that raised minimum heights of building foundations for new homes being built in areas where flood insurance is required. But another bill to limit the percentage of each lot that can be paved or built on -- leaving part of each lot uncovered to soak up rain -- has been held up in committee since May.

Getting solutions that will help Jacksonville handle high water really is crucial, said Mike Darragh, whose home on Craig Creek in the Southside had two feet of water standing in it after Hurricane Irma passed by the city in 2017.

Finding ways to protect infrastructure, is a big part of what's needed, said Darragh, whose home was above the water after less than a day, but remained cut off for three days because the road to his home was underwater and impassable.

"Towns like Jacksonville, we could turn into the Third World in a heartbeat if we don't figure out how to develop the resiliency," Darragh said.

The meeting Monday will be at 2 p.m. in City Hall's Lynwood Roberts Room.

Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263

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