Sanford city crews closed a portion of Fort Mellon Park early Monday after a sinkhole collapsed several feet of a sidewalk along East First Street following a rainstorm that dropped more than five inches of rain.
Russel Sheibenberger, a superintendent with the city’s public works department, said an old culvert that directs stormwater into nearby Lake Monroe collapsed underground and led to the sinkhole.
The rains in north Seminole on Sunday night also caused street flooding and small ponds to form in homeowners’ yards in the historic Midway community just north of the Orlando Sanford International Airport.
“It just rained and rained and rained last night,” said Arthur Jackson, a Midway resident for 35 years, as he overlooked his flooded backyard on Henri Avenue. “The county is just not coming out here to clean out these drains.”
Jackson and other Midway residents have long endured flooded streets, yards, and ditches as the result of Seminole County’s failure for decades to upgrade the drainage systems. Midway is a historically Black community that was developed in the 1940s by migrant workers.
(High-dynamic-range composite image by Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
Last month, Seminole commissioners agreed to earmark $10 million toward stormwater improvements within the Midway basin and surrounding area. The money will come from the county’s $92-million allotment of federal funds through the American Recovery Plan Act.
“It absolutely will help,” said Emory Green Jr., a longtime Midway resident, about the funding.
Seminole’s plan is to remove the old ditches, farmers’ canals and swales in the Midway community and replace them with an underground stormwater drainage system.
Last May, the county completed a basin study that identified flood prone areas within the Midway community. Seminole will soon advertise to hire a civil engineering firm that will design plans for a new stormwater system by May 2022.
The other concern for residents, Green said, is that heavy rains can cause an overflow of septic tanks, which are used by every home in Midway. That’s why Green and other Midway residents are urging Seminole leaders to convert the septic tanks to a central wastewater system.
“Some [septic tanks] will most likely overrun with water [after a heavy rain] and that presents a health hazard,” Green said. “That’s something we’ve been talking about for years. … We first must have a comprehensive study, which will give us an assessment for a septic-to-sewer conversion, so that we can understand what the cost will be.”
At Fort Mellon Park, city crews will rebuild that section of the culvert and reline the stormwater pipe in the coming days before filling in the sinkhole. The city also plans to spend up to $1 million this year improving the stormwater drainage system in the downtown district.
mcomas@orlandosentinel.com
