On the heels of mid-December’s heavy rainfall that caused water from Charlotte Harbor to break through floodgates, enter storm drains and flood Punta Gorda’s historic district, residents braced for another round of heavy rainfall Jan. 9 amid high tide, which will occur around midnight. 

Last week, several residents took their concerns about flooding before Punta Gorda City Council. Mayor Lynne Matthews and council members directed City Manager Greg Murray to conduct a study of what can be done to safeguard homes from future flooding. 

During Hurricane Idalia’s heavy rainfall in late August, several homes, businesses and cars in the downtown area were flooded and/or destroyed. 

Idalia moved into Punta Gorda shortly before 2:30 p.m. Aug. 31, and high tide arrived at 3 p.m., which created the perfect scenario for flooding, public officials said at the time. 

Noting fixing the city’s floodgates won’t be cheap, Murray said the city’s maintenance program will evaluate floodgates and will be fix them if they’re not working correctly. 

Murray said duck bill valves were checked and the flooding issue is not a matter of them being obstructed, but they are designed to keep the harbor water out. 

The problem arises when during high tide, they shut, and compounded with heavy rainfall, there is no way for the water to get through the system, which is blocking the harbor water from getting into the streets.  

Murray said he attempted to explain the system during last week’s Council meeting.  

As of Jan. 9, he said the second wave of inspections were conducted and if any of the valves needed repairs or replacement, they were addressed. 

Among the solutions council members discussed were building higher seawalls, creating retention ponds and possibly a flood assessment district comprising residents of the downtown district and installing a pump system to send the water back to the harbor. 

City of Miami spent $400 million to install pumps and raised streets around neighborhoods that traditionally flood from seawater. It also has seawalls surrounding the city. On sunny days during King tides, which occur during a new or full moon, it is common to see residents wearing boots as the ocean water comes up through storm drains and pumps send the water back to the ocean. 

Resident Dave Gammon, who serves as the county’s director of economic development and spoke at the Jan. 3 meeting, said December’s rain wasn’t the cause of the flooding. He said the cause was the backwash coming up from the harbor through the stormwater system. 

He told council members the solution would be in maintaining the floodgates. “There must be some kind of debris or barnacles or something down there preventing those floodgates from closing,” Gammon said. 

He referred to his communication with Assistant City Manager Melissa Reichert, in which he told of his losses from Idalia. 

Gammon and his wife, Susan, lost the entire first floor of their home, including the kitchen, living room, bedroom, bath and laundry, as well as their two county-owned cars during Idalia, costing them $200,000. 

He said some of his neighbors were flooded again during the mid-December rain event. 

Ashley Harris, a 40-year resident of Punta Gorda, told council members she and her husband, Christian, recently purchased their dream home on Dolly Street before the flooding. 

“I’m no stranger to flooding; I watched it my entire life,” Harris said. “Until you’ve seen it for yourself, and you’ve seen your 8-year-old on an air mattress, asleep in the middle of the night floating, it just brings it to a whole new level.” 

More residents expressed their concerns about future flooding, including Jeannine Polk, who said she’s lived on the water on the Charlotte Harbor side, Punta Gorda Isles, and now three blocks from the water in the historic district. 

“I’ve never experienced flooding to this magnitude,” Polk said. 

She said she must have a tide chart on hand, watching it closely along with the weather because she knows that even a small amount of rainfall coupled with high tide could be a flooding event. 

Polk said in addition to destroying property and cars, the water, which is salty, has killed her grass and plants. 

Kathleen Davis, of Punta Gorda Isles, recommended instead of building the proposed $15.89 million expansion to City Hall on Marion Avenue and Harvey Street in the downtown historic district, the city should locate its essential offices and personnel to a nonflood zone. 

A 30-year-employee of Miami-Dade County, Davis said that during hurricanes Andrew, Wilma and Katrina, she was able to keep working and make every payroll since her operations were 17 miles inland and was able to keep her computer system running.