10-minute read
For two hours on Wednesday evening, residents who live along the shores of Lake Bonny and Little Lake Bonny told Lakeland city commissioners about rancid, sewage-infested floodwaters stagnating inside their homes for weeks, freckling walls with mold, buckling floors, and ruining irreplaceable family photos and heirlooms.
Two people told commissioners about their dogs dying in the days following Hurricane Milton from the stress of evacuating during the storm.
When the night was nearly over, one commissioner said he would be taking out his personal checkbook to help them, while another cried at his seat.
Needs: Mayor Bill Mutz called on the residents to tell commissioners and city management their needs and wants. The residents called for long-term solutions and had several demands:
- Investigate what caused any failures that led to the flooding.
- Look into establishing a recovery fund to assist affected and financially strapped residents.
- Accelerate a long-term stormwater study and develop a plan to improve the drainage system and infrastructure.
- Ensure backup generators are in place for a critical lift station to prevent failures during power outages.
- Provide residents with a clear communication plan and contact information for accessing available resources and assistance.
- Explore the possibility of annexing the affected areas into the city of Lakeland to improve coordination and access to resources.
“We’ve lost everything,” Nicole Ramirez, 49, told commissioners. “My furniture is molded, the walls are molded. Everything. My husband lost his wheelchair. He lost his scooter, his oxygen machine. We lost everything.”
Kraft, 40, said their boxer, Taino, who was almost 10 years old, died a few days after their mid-storm escape.
Ricardo Ramirez, 51, said they are staying with family in Deltona, driving back and forth to Lakeland at least five times a week for his medial appointments and to deal with the house. He said no shelter will take them and their dogs.
Related: ‘I can’t live here and breathe this. The mold is never going to go away.’ – Ricardo Ramirez
Daughter’s heartache: Jennifer Atkins spoke on behalf of her mother, who had been a feisty, independent 78-year-old still mowing her own lawn on Honeytree Lane West.
“She no longer has her house due to the county and the city,” said Atkins, who broke down in tears. “I’m very emotional over this at this point … I’m seeing my mother deteriorate every day because she does not have her home. She’s no longer independent; she’s dependent on me to take care of her.”
Atkins then asked what the city officials had planned for them.
Emotions: As speakers talked about their difficulties, the normally reserved Commissioner Bill “Tiger” Read began to cry, covering his face and wiping away tears. At one point, he turned his back to the room as he was overcome with emotion.
“It’s been a tough night to sit here and I feel for everyone of you and I don’t know what else to say and how we can help you,” Read said, having a hard time getting the words out. “But I feel it in my heart there’s something we can do, but I don’t know what that is.”
One of the most moving moments of the night was when Commissioner Mike Musick, who owns a roofing company, talked about his own experience with loss and pledged to personally help those suffering.
“When my wife and I were first married, we did lose our house to fire and I know what you’re going through,” Musick said quietly.
He cautioned the crowd that the wheels of government turn slowly, but, as a commissioner, he would approve of every measure of help that he could with the “muddled mess” they’re facing, one that the commission had never had to deal with.
“A handful of years ago, I started a non-profit and I’ve reached out to them … and asked if we raise funds, can we take those funds and find a way to get them distributed to you guys?” Musick said. “It means so little when I hear how much you guys have lost, but I’m going to write a check tomorrow (for) $50,000 and I’m gonna put it in that account. And I’m gonna see what I can do and hopefully I can spread the word and hopefully I can get there to be more money there.”
Answers from the city: The residents also heard from City Manager Shawn Sherrouse, who provided evidence that a much-talked-about city pump was operating, but the water simply had nowhere to go during a storm that the National Weather Service said dropped 13.13 inches of rain on Lakeland in a 24-hour period. A NWS meteorologist said the last time anything like that happened was in 1960, when almost 10 inches of rain fell.
In the 1920s, Polk County built a drainage connection to Lake Parker, the same location used today.
In the early 2000s, Polk County installed a control structure to manage water flow between the lakes, which are at an equal elevation. Sherrouse said it had two purposes: to keep water from flowing into Lake Bonny during high-water events and also to hold water in Lake Bonny at other times.
But a heavy rain in July, along with rains from Hurricane Debby in early August and Hurricane Helene in late September saturated the ground and left the rainwater from Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9 and 10 with no way out of Lake Bonny.
As city officials have for the last month, Sherrouse explained that Lake Gibson, Lake Mirror and Lake Bonny flow into Lake Parker, which flows into Saddle Creek, which heads south into Lake Hancock, finally rushing into the Peace River. All that water eventually winds up in the Gulf of Mexico near Port Charlotte. Officials have been worried about flooding a wastewater treatment facility in Bartow and flooding other homes downriver.
lake bonny
City pump: Sherrouse showed a Lakeland Electric bill for the pump. It jumped from $15.50 in May, June and July combined, to more than $1,300 in August and $2,700 in September. He also showed the dates when city workers checked on the pump.
Mayor Mutz acknowledged that the pump might have been malfunctioning.
Residents told commissioners that the pump could not have been working well because the lake levels never dropped, despite the pump running 24/7 starting Aug. 5. And many of them said they had been calling the city for months to report the high water levels in Lake Bonny and Little Lake Bonny.
Coordination: Several people demanded the maintenance records for the pump, which they said was grossly inadequate to move out 80 million gallons of floodwater to lower the lake level.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought in three industrial-sized pumps and pipes on Oct. 23 to alleviate the flooding, with city officials snaking the pipes through neighborhoods to reach the canal that flows into Lake Parker after CSX declined to allow the pipes to go over or under their railroad tracks via a direct route.
Several people asked for a fund to be set up to help people who can’t afford to pay rent and a mortgage as they wait for repairs, which will take months.
Video of the meeting:
Plan needed: Lakeside resident Brittany Dickey also called for a plan to prevent future flooding and for the city to take over management of all of Lake Bonny to ensure proper care.
City spokesman Kevin Cook said the city is responsible for the lake and it falls within city limits, but the county controls the drainage canal flowing back and forth between Lake Bonny and Lake Parker, and the Southwest Florida Water Management District ultimately controls the amount of water that can be discharged to head downstream. Residents say the multiple jurisdictions failed to adequately coordinate efforts.
Dickey said many families were about to invest their life savings into making their houses their homes again and so the city should ensure this never happens again.
“You are so good at caring for your lakes and making the city of Lakeland beautiful and I feel like you could do that same exact thing for Lake Bonny,” she said.
Shouts: The most contentious moment of the night came when Colleen Betzer of Bonny Shores Mobile Home Park called for the city to prioritize the needs of residents over drawing down the floodwaters of Lake Mirror for a car show Oct. 17-19, which many in the room believe contributed to Lake Bonny flooding.
Mutz tried to explain that Lake Mirror is a substantially smaller lake than Bonny and sending Lake Mirror’s waters into Lake Parker had little or nothing to do with their homes flooding.
“That’s water we controlled. The difference is that (Bonny is) multijurisdictional,” Mutz said. “When Lake Mirror took place as a car show — and you’re bringing in people from all around the country — making certain that we got that water level low enough was very, very important for the event … If you do the calculations on that, you would see that that would not have been an impairing factor. It’s a small body of water, relatively speaking.”
The crowd shouted at the mayor.
“A small body of water that went into our home!” someone yelled.
“And we almost died!” another person said.
Annexation: The night ended with talk of annexing all property surrounding the lake into the city. The residents would have to petition the city for that and certain requirements would have to be met, including a contiguous line of property with which to connect.
Annexation into the city limits allows businesses and residents to receive city services, including police, fire and wastewater.
Property owners would also have to pay city taxes.
A map on the city’s website shows some property just east of the lake are outside of city limits.
Coordinating help: There was talk from the dais and also in the hallways after the meeting of creating a fund for flooded residents through United Way of Central Florida. United Way officials and other agencies were available at City Hall Wednesday night to offer assistance.
UWCF President Christina Criser Jackson said Friday that the organization is working to coordinate aid agency efforts, although they don’t have a specific fund set up for Lakeland-area flood victims. She encouraged people to apply for help.
Agencies that are helping include:
- FEMA
- The American Red Cross
- The Salvation Army
- Freedom Tours
- One More Child
- The First United Methodist Church Foundation
- Hope Florida
- The Polk Sheriff’s Charities
- Peace River Center
- Combee Connections Ministries and Church
- The Early Learning Coalition
Criser Jackson said anyone needing assistance can call 211 or text their zip code to 898211.
In addition, there will be another Community Recovery Outreach event on Nov. 23 at the RP Funding Center, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.. Multiple aid agencies will be on site to assist people in applying for help and answer questions.
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