ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For the past several months, Tampa Bay 28 has been following a story out of St. Pete involving a group of residents concerned about a new housing project causing their streets to flood. On Friday, Tampa Bay 28 returned to Disston Heights to seek out some answers for those residents.
Watch report from Robert Boyd
“I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 25 years, and we’ve never had any flooding issues,” said resident Scott Osborn, who says flooding is now becoming a recurring theme.
The last two trips Tampa Bay 28 made to Disston Heights, in August and early January, water was running through the streets.
“It’s been up to their doors, in some of their garages, and some of their houses,” said resident Randy Bryant. “The project should have never happened, it should have never been allowed to go into this neighborhood.”
Residents are blaming the flooding on a new 86-unit affordable housing project being built at Palm Lake Christian Church.
“It’s just too much of a demand on the system, I think we are expanding in ways that the system wasn’t designed for,” said Osborn.
Homeowners say most of the neighborhood was against it, but the city approved the project anyway.
“They just do not listen, and that’s where we stand, and it continues to happen all the time — there is nobody to help us out, we are on our own,” said Bryant.
“You feel hopeless at times, and you don’t have a voice,” said Osborn.
So over the past few months, Tampa Bay 28 has been providing residents with that voice, and today, during one of our interviews, we received a call from the project's civil engineer, Jeremy Couch, with Tampa Civil.
“The first event was a really extreme rainfall event while they were installing the retention pond and that got cured immediately,” said Couch. “And the most recent activity was a water main break.”
Couch said all these issues have been resolved and flooding is not going to be a problem going forward.
“The Southwest Florida Water Management District has reviewed this, multiple engineers, I don’t think this project is going to cause any flooding,” said Couch. “This project is going to actually hold water back that wasn’t held back before, make things better.”
We then relayed this information to the residents.
“I do not believe him for one second, they’ve said it all along, they said it from day one that it wasn’t going to cause a problem,” said Bryant. “You can look back at the interview last week and you can see how much water from a broken pipe caused. How much water is going to be poured down on these people’s houses when it rains in the summertime.”
As for the church, they said they are proud of this project because it’s going to provide housing for the backbone of the city, people like first responders, teachers and members of the service industry.
Share Your Story with Robert
We all take pride in where we live, and Robert Boyd takes pride in highlighting why we feel that way. Whether it’s people doing good or underrepresented communities that deserve a spotlight, Robert wants to know about them. Just use the form below to reach out to Robert.
.
New mental health programs making an impact in Florida
Florida Behavioral Health Association's Scott Burgess shared with Tampa Bay 28 Anchor Wendy Ryan the successes of new initiatives being tested across Florida.
