2. County Attorney should be directed to file public nuisance lawsuit against developers and those responsible for poor draining. This is what happens when developers get their way, every day.
3. No provision in flawed impact fee proposal before County Commission to internalize the external costs of development like bad drainage?
4. We need a development moratorium.
5. We need a provision to make developers pay for ALL of their environmental impacts.
6. Our quality of life is being ruined by developers' greed.
7. Dirty water, constant flooding is a public health hazard.
8. Who was the developer? Who was its lawyer? Research, interviews, investigative reporting both desired and required.
9. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration report from circa 1978 found high correlation between high growth rate and corruption in planning and zoning.
10.In the 1990s, our County allowed an asphalt plant to be built on SR 207 near schools, homes, senior citizen housing. When I interviewed County zoning official for the Collective Press, she was arrogantly insouciant about the public health effects of asphalt on cancer mortality and suicide rates.
11. One County building inspector pled guilty to federal extortion charges in 2015 -- WILL RANDY ROGERS admitted shaking down businesses if they did not pay him money, threatening to file bogus code enforcement complaints.
12. Is the former inspector cooperating with an FBI investigation?Whatever happened to his case?
13. St. Augustine Record needs to go to the scene of development crimes and start investigating what the County Building Department does all day, every day.
St. Johns County Building Department
Address: 4040 Lewis Speedway, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Opens 7:30AM Mon
Phone: (904) 827-6800
Drainage problems haunt Winton Circle
By Sheldon Gardner
Posted Feb 24, 2018 at 2:01 AM
St. Augustine Record
For homeowners on Winton Circle, poor drainage and flooding have become a routine part of life, an issue they’ve been pleading with the county to change.
Bonnie Gurke says has dealt with the issue since she moved in more than 20 years ago.
These days when it rains heavily, as it has several times in the past couple of months, water creeps about halfway up her driveway and covers the grass near her mailbox — and can take a couple of weeks to go away, she said. When that happens, she won’t get the mail for fear of slipping in the grass and falling into filthy water.
The water is so deep at times ducks will freely take a dip.
“I call it my pond, Lake Gurke,” she said.
While Gurke’s property was free of standing water on Friday, a short drive down the road standing water was noticeable in ditches, stretching over parts of driveways and covering patches of land. Ducks waddled near those areas, and a turtle crept out and covered itself in water near the base of a driveway.
Residents have told county officials that drainage issues on the county-owned road are getting worse. Fresh pleas to St. Johns County for help arose in October after floodwaters from Hurricane Irma and a nor’easter had been lingering for weeks.
This week, several people returned to the County Commission, asking again for more to be done and providing anecdotes such as schoolchildren having to slog through dirty standing water. The county has been working with residents to come up with solutions, but nothing has been decided yet.
Commissioner Paul Waldron expressed concern for Winton Circle and the need for something to be done, and other commissioners agreed and cited health concerns.
“I’m with you, too,” Commissioner Jay Morris said. “You can’t have these kids walking home from the school bus in 2 feet of water — I mean we can’t put it off.”
With the abundance of drainage problems in the county, and a shortage of county funding, commissioners asked for more information at their next meeting on March 6.
“Winton Circle, I imagine there’s probably 10 of them 20 of them throughout the county,” Waldron said. “But ... we could get the ones that are ready to go that have been suffering the longest and try to get them moving forward.”
The county’s Public Works Department has been looking into projects in communities that have been hit by storm flooding, nor’easters and heavy rains, according to a document by County Engineer Jay Brawley. But funding is the barrier.
“In order for these projects to move forward into construction, funding needs to be identified. ... Funds may have to be utilized from Reserves or an alternative funding source may have to be determined,” according to Brawley.
The challenge on Winton Circle, built in the mid-1990s, has been on the county’s radar for years, Public Works Director Neal Shinkre said. He said previously that the water that comes in has nowhere to go because of the lack of drainage infrastructure, and that the development would not be allowed under current standards.
The county has done an initial investigation into ways to help the problem. One idea was to divert water to a nearby wetland, but that wouldn’t work because of the elevation of the wetland, he said.
Another alternative that’s still being considered is to send water to Florida Department of Transportation ditches along U.S. 1, he said. That would cost between 1.4 million and $1.7 million for design and construction, according to initial estimates, and more analysis and permitting would be needed to move forward, Shinkre said.
“They’ve been a very patient community, and I respect that,” Shinkre said.
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