DEBARY, Fla. – DeBary’s oldest neighborhood is set to get its first stormwater system after the city secured state funding to address a long-standing flooding problem.
The area — where streets carry names like Alta Vista, Grande Vista and Lago Vista — is home to some of the city’s oldest residences, with many built in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
Despite its age, the neighborhood has never had a formal stormwater system. Residents currently rely on swales and ditches that struggle to keep up when storms hit, leaving some properties underwater for days at a time.
The city received $500,000 from the state to bring relief to the area. The funding will help pay for pipes and other infrastructure designed to drain water quickly, and the project will tie into other major stormwater improvement projects already planned across the city.
City Manager Carmen Rosamonda says the community has endured what officials call “nuisance flooding” for years, and he’s ready to move forward.
“We will probably enter into a contract with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and they will administer the grants; that’ll probably take three to four months to get that done, and then the projects fully engineered and ready to go, shovel-ready,” said Rosamonda.
Rosamonda says construction should be complete by this time next year.