Excessive Rainfall Leaves Upper Villas Flooded

VIILAS — Residents in the northeast section of Villas near Tampa, Florida and Miami avenues are suffering from flooded yards and level of water not seen in recent memory.
At a Jan. 20 Lower Township Council meeting, County Freeholder Director Dan Beyel said 2009 was the third wettest year since records began being kept in the 1890s. He said a normal yearly rainfall would be 40 inches but the area received 60 inches in 2009, about a 50 percent increase in rain.
“There’s water in places that I’ve never seen,” said Mayor Michael Beck.
He said it was phenomenal the amount of rain that had fallen and how often it rained.
Assistant County Engineer Ken Schellenger said the county received complaints of flooding in the eastside of Villas, an area served by the Fishing Creek Watershed, which covers 10 square miles and extends from Bayshore Road in Villas to the lower portion of Whitesboro including most of Rio Grande and the county airport and south to the Lower Township Municipal Utilities Authority headquarters on Bayshore Road.
Schellenger said the watershed has been closed off from Delaware Bay since 1935 when a tide gate was installed which isolated it from tidal flow. He said in the late 1960s, a pump station was constructed which is currently operated by the county Mosquito Commission.
About 35 percent of the watershed is the Fishing Creek marsh area that acts like a sponge and absorbs a lot of water under normal circumstances, said Schellenger. The pump system is adequate and runs almost constantly although it is subject to clogs.
Schellenger said he would follow the suggestion of Councilman Glenn Douglass to investigate installing a monitoring system on the pumps that would notify the county when there is a failure.
Schellenger said a groundwater monitoring station in Rio Grande showed a level above the 80 percent range, which is the highest level in five years.
“You can say it’s basically off the scale,” he said.
A flow gauge on the Tuckahoe River in Upper Township is well above record height for January. Schellenger said typical daily reading was 55 cubic feet per second of water flow and last week was running at 120 cubic feet per second.
After the Christmas snowstorm, flow peaked at 400 cubic feet per second, which was eight times the normal flow.
Between November and late April, of all the rain that falls in resident’s yards, about 90 percent stays there and eventually soaks into the ground with about 10 percent as runoff, which moves only 10 to 20 feet per day, said Schellenger.
“When it rains an inch in your yard, the elevation of the groundwater will rise four to five inches in response,” he said.
Schellenger said for those living close to a stream or ditch, one inch of water may recede in a week if you have favorable soil conditions.
He said the elevation of water at the pump station is less than two feet. On the eastside of Tampa Avenue, water elevation in ditches is about three feet with a little more than three feet at Fulling Mill Road, said Schellenger.
The water elevation in Bowman’s Lake at Greenwood Avenue is slightly over six feet, which receives drainage from a number of streets.
Schellenger displayed a 1930s aerial photo of Villas with an overlay of current streets. The northeast section of Villas: Florida, Tampa, Miami avenues was farms and marshes. He said it was a low area that received some fill “but apparently not enough.”
Some of the homes with flooding problems are at five foot elevation and the water elevation in the creek or meadow is between two and three feet. It is not a case of water backing up to homes but excessive rainfall and sluggish groundwater movement making drainage slow, said Schellenger.
Tampa Avenue at Bayshore Road has an elevation of about 7 feet and sinks to 5.5 feet in the area of Reef and Pirate roads, rises for a few blocks to 6.5 feet and then sinks to 4.5 feet in elevation at its east end termination, said Schellenger.
He said there were inlets at that location which discharge water to a ditch, which had a water elevation of 3 feet last week.
Schellenger said the pump station was primarily pumping water that was seeping into the sides of the ditches and the creek around the edges of a big bowl: Fishing Creek Meadow.
When it doesn’t rain, the pump station makes about one half inch to an inch of progress lowering the creek, he said.
If a Nor’easter brought 6 inches of rain, the pump station has adequate capacity to handle the surge from rainfall, which takes two, or three days to reach peak flow, said Schellenger.
“Primarily, I think what people are experiencing is groundwater,” he said.
East Tampa Avenue resident Harry McCloy said 10 years ago he could dig down 10 inches in his yard before he hit water.
“I can’t dig down 2 inches without hitting water,” he said. “There is something wrong. Are the oceans rising? Yes. Is that affecting us? I don’t think so. I think it’s the swamp.”
McCloy said the marsh should be drained to a lower level.
Resident Fred Long comparing a map from the 1930s and an aerial photo of Villas from 2007 noted a huge increase in the amount of ground cover and as a result, increased runoff.
He said there were areas where the groundwater was so high, houses should not have been built. Long asked if there was a planning process to prevent new homes from being built in low-lying areas.