They take flooding seriously in the village of Virginia Gardens.
The tiny suburb of Miami, with a population of less than 2,500 people, is completing its latest drainage improvement project designed to prevent the type of widespread flooding that hit much of South Florida last week.
“Downpour that we had last week, we had not one house or one garage flooded,” said city council member Richard Block.
Block has been in the village government for 20 years. He told us no homes were damaged in his town during last week’s rain bomb event because, he says, the drainage project is working. But it wasn’t always that way.
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“The city was a swimming pool, every time it rains, water would creep into their garages,” Block said, pointing at homes in the neighborhood.
The city obtained $850,000 from the state of Florida to improve the situation: building new drains and installing a pump system, and it’s all part of phase one of the project.
However, last week, on the same day that a deluge of rain hit South Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $700,000 for the other half of the Virginia Gardens project.
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“Yes, but we can’t cry about it, there’s a zillion dot-orgs that didn’t receive their money, there’s a zillion other cities that didn’t receive their money, you know we gotta man up, gotta keep going the right way,” Block said.
“Well it’s disappointing,” said Virginia Gardens resident Carlos Chavez. “Primarily because it’s something that is needed, obviously.”
The governor’s office advised the city to apply for a Department of Environmental Protection grant to pay for phase two of its project.
Work is going on right outside Jose Cabrera’s door. He told us his driveway gets flooded during heavy rains, so he’s hoping the ongoing project will solve that problem. Chavez told us before phase one, flood waters would threaten to seep into his house.
“I’m lucky the house is elevated because a couple of times it got up to the second step, so obviously if we were at ground level it would cause major issues, all this was basically lakefront at one time,” Chavez said, gesturing toward the street.
He also pointed out that home insurance is extremely hard to obtain because of the flooding issues, so vetoing drainage improvement projects feeds that problem.
Block said his city has already applied for the DEP grant, so he’s hopeful they will obtain the funding to proceed with phase two after phase one is completed.
