Lake Winnemissett community asks DeLand for flooding help

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Lake Winnemissett community asks DeLand for flooding help
BEACON PHOTOS/CHASIDY RUTH; 21 days after Milton hit, the Lake Winnemissett community is still experiencing standing water and drainage issues.

Jump to the city’s comments

The residents along Lake Winnemissett east of DeLand are fighting to protect the environmental quality of their lake amid flooding issues from Hurricane Milton. 

Members of the Lake Winnemissett Civic Association along with numerous other residents of the DeLand area, spoke at the Oct. 21 DeLand City Commission meeting regarding flooding and environmental damage caused by alleged overdevelopment. 

“Winnemissett was not long ago the gem of Central Florida lakes,” LWCA President Nancy LaRiviere told the City Commission. “Having done lake watch duties for over 17 years now and using quantifiable data, I see the deterioration and fear it may never come back again.”

The Beacon got the chance to meet with the LWCA, tour the lake and discuss the concerns association members had for the “gem” that the residents have maintained for generations. 

Joni Gonzalez, who has lived along the lake since 1995, gave this writer a tour around surrounding subdivisions. Cresswind and Lakewood Park are housing communities under development and nestled in the surrounding areas of Lake Winnemissett. Between the two projects, more than 1,000 new homes could be added to the area.

A rubber barrier in Cresswind’s man-made water drainage path five days after Hurricane Milton arrived and thousands of gallons of water went into the lake.

The first stop, Lakewood Park, showed a visible elevation difference compared to the homes by nearby Lake Diamond, which flows directly into Lake Winnemissett.

Lakewood Park has an elevation of 82.41 feet, designed to keep the area higher so water can flow downward. In contrast, Lake Winnemissett sits at 56.91 feet, creating a 25.5-foot difference.

The elevation allows stormwater from the development of Lakewood Park to flow directly into the shallower Diamond. A visible trail of water from the subdivision into the woodline surrounding Lake Diamond was seen on The Beacon’s visit. 

“It’s just been flowing constantly … This trickling situation has made the lake a decimated shell of what it formally was,”  Gonzalez said.  

“The visibility [clarity of the water] used to be 20 feet, now it’s only 8,” LaRivere said. 

Lake Winnemissett is a county-maintained area, while the surrounding subdivisions are annexed into the city of DeLand. That’s why the LWCA called on the city of Deland to address the effects of the subdivision on the lake. 

After we visited Lakewood Park, we ventured to the west side of the lake to view the Cresswind subdivision that is in the first phase of construction. 

“I’d imagine the excess runoff is a combination of the heightened elevation of everything they’ve developed so far, the pavement preventing absorption, the lack of trees to suck up some of that water, and the inadequate retention pond capacity,” John Engle of the LWCA said. 

The Cresswind subdivision did put in a small yellow barrier inside of the path to aid with larger objects in the runoff five days after Hurricane Milton passed through, but members of the LWCA said it did not help.

The problem got bigger for the residents of Lake Winnemissett when during Hurricane Milton the lake rose so much that nearby New York Avenue was flooded in water, leaving it hazardous to the public. 

The LWCA took The Beacon on a tour of Lake Winnemissett and the surrounding shoreline on Oct. 27. There are numerous homes close to the lake with water completely engulfing their yards, and many people’s docks and fences were fully submerged in the water.

Water flows from the Cresswind subdivision into Lake Winnemissett, causing clarity issues.

Because Lake Winnemissett residents have septic tanks, and their septic drainage fields also flooded, the lake water as well as their well water was exposed to contaminants. 

When asked about an ideal solution for saving the environment of the lake,  LaRiviere said “I’d ask the Cresswind development to modify their plan and cut the number of houses in half [from 600 to 300] and plant some of the trees back that they’ve taken out.” 

“How about they admit they were wrong about the engineering they did in the neighborhoods that are running off and flooding neighborhoods that have never flooded before, buy a block and put deeper ponds in and keep the watershed in their own area and not give it to their neighbors,” Gonzalez added. 

“They need to change their design criteria. They are only supposed to design for a 25-year storm; they need to be designing for 500-year storms because that’s the new normal,” Engle alleged. “The city needs to pass an ordinance and add it to their land development code.” 

The LWCA stressed that their situation is just an example of something that is happening all over the county. 

“Here’s our situation: It’s a prime example of what’s going on everywhere, it’s not a ‘woe is me our dock is underwater’ — it’s, look at where the water is coming from, who’s doing it, and why,” said Engle.

   The Beacon spoke with Chris Graham, community information manager for the city of DeLand. “As of January 1 builds are on a 100-year storm standard.” This does not include development that has already been approved to begin. A 100-year storm standard is approximately 11 inches of rain, hurricane Milton gave 18 inches to DeLand. 

The LWCA is actively pushing for more sustainable practices and changes to development plans and urging the city of DeLand to step up and protect both the lake and the community. 

Here is the city’s statement on the flooding:

The developments in DeLand were designed per the regulations set forth by the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) as they are the permitting authority for stormwater. SJRWMD standards for land-locked basins are modeling for a 25-year 96-hour storm event. DeLand has opted for a higher standard recently which is a 100-year storm which is approximately 11 inches of rain retained on site. Even a 1,000-year standard would only retain 18 inches, still not sufficient to cover the amount of rain produced by Milton which was 20+ inches. Additionally, these standards do not deal with the fact that many of the properties impacted were not built to current St. John’s Stormwater Management standards and do not account for the runoff that the properties around the lake send into the lake along with drainage from SR 44. In addition, Cresswind development falls within two separate watersheds and is topographically split by an existing utility easement located roughly in the center of the project. The western portion of the site drains west by overland sheetflow to existing wetland systems which drain underneath Lake Winnemissett Drive through existing culverts which drain into Lake Winnemissett. The eastern portion of the site drains east by overland sheetflow to an existing wetland conveyance system within the Deep Creek watershed part of the Middle St. Johns River basin.

As a result, it is incumbent on all of us to accept a new reality that these types of extreme rain events are becoming more prevalent and we should try to adapt to that with the caveat that hurricanes can always produce more rain and wind than our standards are designed to handle. In the case of Lake Winnemissett, most of the houses around the lake are in the unincorporated county with the exception of Cresswind and is bounded by SR 44 on the south. Solutions to mitigate flooding and to prepare for future storms that are pursued throughout the City and unincorporated county would need to be led by the local government with jurisdiction in partnership with other local governments, the State of Florida and the Federal government.

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