Article Courtesy of The
Ledger
By Paul Nutcher
Published June 16, 2023
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Imperial Lakes residents looking for a quick fix to decades-long flooding
problems will probably be disappointed.
Joan Pezzani and her neighbors told Polk County commissioners at Tuesday's
meeting that they wanted an immediate fix to periodic flooding along Imperial
Lakes Boulevard. The boulevard is the only way in or out of the massive
1,700-acre golf course community with housing and commercial developments in
Mulberry.
She is concerned that
her disabled daughter and the more than 60% of the
community's elderly residents may not be accessible by first
responders in the event of an emergency.
County officials said Tuesday there is no immediate fix to
the problems, but they suggested they might try to expedite
a longer-term fix that's in the works. In the meantime,
commissioners decided to reach out to the homeowners
association of Belmont Park, a small neighborhood within
Imperial Lakes that's close to the flood-prone area, to see
if the association could dredge a retention pond and a
drainage ditch.
But on Wednesday, the treasurer of the Belmont Park Home
Owners Association of Polk County Inc. said the
association's retention ponds and its drainage ditch are not
to blame.
The three retention ponds on the association’s property are
maintained and are clean, said Glenn Harshbarger, the BPHOA
treasurer and an 11-year Belmont Park resident. The
association had also paid to have the drainage ditch cleaned
out earlier this year, and yet the flooding continues.
“It definitely seems
like a grading issue with the road,” he said by phone. The
Imperial Lakes Boulevard slopes downward near the
flood-prone area of the roadway and there is a potential for
stormwater to linger in front of his subdivision, he said.
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Imperial Lakes residents Joan Pezzani and David
Kolodziej stand near the edge of an overgrown retention pond behind
Kolodziej's home at 4130 Old Colony Road in Mulberry. Residents in
the area are pressuring the county to help with flooding along
Imperial Lakes Boulevard.
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“That problem has been happening – from what I’ve been told from residents
who have lived there – 30 years,” Harshbarger said. “It was initially blamed
on Belmont Park, and that was the exact reason we got that cleaned out so we
could show proof to the county that that part of the ditch was cleaned out,
it’s not our issue.”
Harshbarger said he is glad residents are attending county meetings and
photographing and taking videos of the flooding because his neighborhood is
also impacted negatively by flooding.
“This is a county issue through and through, and it is on them to fix,” he
said.
Another resident who spoke at the county meeting, David Kolodziej, 64, of
Old Colony Road said there is a nearly 1,000-feet drainage pond behind his
and his neighbors' homes that has not been maintained in at least seven
years.
"We have another hurricane and we're in trouble," said Kolodziej, who has
lived in his home for 27 years. He said recent floodwaters have reached the
back tires of his car while it is parked in his driveway.
"It's never been like that, never," he said by phone Thursday.
On a drive through Belmont Park, he added, their retention ponds are all
cleaned out just as Harshbarger said. But the retention pond behind his
house remains choked with muck and weeds. The association used to spray the
retention area but no longer does that.
"I just found out Belmont owns it," Kolodziej said, who has checked with the
Polk County Property Appraisers maps that show the unmaintained retention
pond is within the association's property.
Harshbarger referred further comment to John Hall at the Lakeland-based Polk
Community Association Management, the property owner. A phone message left
for Hall on Thursday was not returned by deadline.
Commission Chairman George Lindsey told the residents at the meeting in
Bartow on Tuesday that the county was aware of the flooding issue and there
was a longer-term solution in the works.
“This community was developed over 50 years ago, and the standard then was
certainly not the standard we hold people to today,” Lindsey said.
He hoped permitting and engineering and then construction for the long-term
fix could be expedited. The current timeframe is 18 months to finish the
project once it starts.
Jay M. Jarvis, Polk County’s director of roads and drainage, has told
Pezzani via email that there is a $15 million Imperial Lakes Boulevard
Drainage Improvement project in the works to address stormwater issues in
the housing development.
Jarvis also said there were no short term “fixes to address this flooding.”
"We have contacted one of the HOA Property Management Companies about
cleaning out a portion of the drainage ditch that goes from Imperial Lakes
Blvd to the west and an old pond that is on their property as well," Jarvis
added in an email on Wednesday.
"It is my opinion that the cleaning of these drainage facilities will not
address the type of storm events that flood the roadway but could provide
some relief for smaller storm events," he said.
Jarvis also shared drawings of the proposed concept plan that showed the
addition of a second concrete pipe for drainage from the boulevard to the
parcels the county plans to purchase on the east side of Imperial Lakes
Boulevard for stormwater management. The drawing notes say the area devoted
to water retention would be expanded by more than 10 acres and the capacity
of an existing pond would expanded.
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