How does a Florida city with 400 miles of canals not go underwater every time it rains? You can thank the city's Public Works Department crews that are clearing out pipes, inlets, and storm drains every day.
"We have over 5,000 outlets, 27,000 storm pipes and 24,000 storm inlets. So we try to take care of everything throughout the city," said Public Works employee Lance Henderson.
NBC2 followed Lance and his crew to clean up drains and inlets by Cultural Park today.
First, they clean out the openings, then they pop open the manhole and use the 1,500-gallon vac-truck to suck everything out until it's clean. You can bet these crews have found some crazy things.
"Usually, we come across turtles, opossums, alligators, fish. Basically the norm for Florida," Henderson said.
However, litter is what clogs drains the most. It's also the most preventable.
Crews tackle this problem year-round. Public Works Director Matt Williams said there's an annual program where city staff inspects stormwater systems, canals, ditches, and catch bases. Crews also handle pipe clean-up, canal clean-up and canal dredging. In addition to all that, the city has a contract with a street sweeper.
"Our stormwater group is not just out ahead of a storm or a couple of days before. They're out in the dry season doing maintenance on the ditches and canals," Henderson said.
There are a couple of extra steps the city takes when a storm is approaching, like lowering weirs and removing carp grates. Williams said he's also working with design teams to figure out what to do with more notorious areas like Chiquita Boulevard and Trafalgar Parkway. The city closed the intersection Sunday into most of Monday when Debby flooded it. Even with all this work, Williams said there is a price to living in paradise.
"Our stormwater system is designed for a certain amount of rain. One thing we need to understand sometimes is that when we have very excessive rain, there's no stormwater system that you can design and build to accommodate every single event out there," Williams said.