ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A group of St. Augustine residents gathered Tuesday evening to learn more about the city’s vulnerability assessment, which is specifically focused on community assets and their flooding risks.
Jessica Beach is the chief resilience officer for the city of St. Augustine. She said they’ve identified areas throughout the city that have issues with flooding.
“A lot of our typical hot spots that we’re already aware of in the city have been kind of identified in the assessment,” Beach said. “So we’re going to be looking more at projects and kind of vetting. Yes, these are critical assets that we kind of know have flooded but now we have the data to back that up and really support it, so we can move forward with some type of funding or projects that can help address that.”
Donna Dove has lived in Davis Shores for 35 years. Before Hurricane Matthew, her home had never flooded, and since then she said it’s flooded four times. She attended Tuesday night’s meeting to share her concerns about residents and businesses not being included in the study.
“It’s more like public assets, such as, say, a school, something like that and while those are important, so are the structures where we live and work every day,” Dove said.
Just a few weeks ago, downtown St. Augustine saw flooding from heavy rain.
Bryan Ott works downtown at the Cathedral Parish School, and he said it seemed like flooding has gotten worse in recent years.
“Hurricane David and Hurricane Donna and Dora were the ones that I heard about growing up and experienced,” Ott said. “But now we’ve been hit twice in the last 10 years, and we’ve flooded on our school campus, even from minor events, tropical storms twice in the last three years.”
Beach said they’re gathering feedback to develop a preliminary adaptation plan.
“That ultimately will turn into the state, this whole vulnerability assessment plan, so we can be eligible for cost share funding to do projects that are going to help address some of the flooding challenges,” Beach said.
There are many assets listed in the vulnerability assessment ranging from historical sites to resources that keep the city running, like water and wastewater treatment plants.
“Things like our historic buildings downtown the Castillo, a lot of the historic buildings that you see that are on the National Register, things of that nature, we want to make sure that those are captured in our critical assets list,” Beach said. “And so those are some things that we’re looking at, but it also includes roads that are important for evacuation routes.”
Ott is hoping that the Cathedral Parish School will be included on the list of community assets.
“It was unclear from the maps because the detail is sometimes difficult to zero in on,” Ott said. “You can see general areas where the color-coded assets are, but you can’t tell exactly what they represent. I was pleased to see on the asset prioritization chart that there were two or three schools that were identified as high or highest priority, and I’m hoping that mine was one of them.”
With so much flooding that continues to happen throughout the city, Dove said she’s done everything to update her home to mitigate issues with more flooding potentially coming into her home. She hopes that a study can be done to figure out why the water is coming in the first place.
“I know there are different opinions on that. Mine happens to be that the inlet, St Augustine inlet, has been dredged so much that way too much water comes in, especially when there is a storm off the coast or coming up the coast,” Dove said. “Northeast winds hit us and it’s a full or a new moon. All of that is affecting water coming into us as a city.”
Dove also hoped the city would look into updating its drainage system.
“I think we need to start looking at modern ways to address water draining,” she said. “Once we’ve got it, we need to know how to get rid of it, and to try to help the assets we have, such as our homes, withstand when the water is coming in or coming down.”
The city of St. Augustine has the vulnerability assessment presentation listed on their website. There’s also a link to submit public comments on that page.