With emotions still raw three weeks after Tropical Storm Debby dumped record rainfall on Sarasota, people poured into the Sarasota County Commission quarters on Tuesday in protest of building more new homes in an area that seems increasingly prone to flooding.
“Sarasota County needs to pause approval of increased density on new developments,” said Chris Bales, one of the public comment speakers at a marathon meeting that ran from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“It's critical that the county has stricter stormwater design criteria and uses up-to-date rainfall data in that criteria before rezone hearings, not after development, to show that they do not increase off-site flooding,” Bales said.
Commissioners delayed further action on one smaller development near central Sarasota, by voting for a continuance, which essentially delays any action on a proposal to rezone and build a new neighborhood of 46 homes off Brown Lane, north of Fruitville Road and west of I-75.
But on a larger proposed development further south, known as 3H Ranch and led by developer Pat Neal, commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the master development order and rezone petition to add more than 6,500 homes.
“Obviously the timing is not good,” said commissioner Ron Cutsinger. “But I believe that the stormwater that now just sheets off of this property without any attenuation or treatment, when we develop this, it will be treated, it will be held, it will be filtered, before it goes out into the bay.”
Some speakers who worked with Neal in various capacities spoke highly of his ethics and attention to detail, urging commissioners to approve the 3H project.
Others spoke out against the notion of building more than 6,576 residential units in a space currently zoned for a few hundred, in a largely agricultural area.
“I have been involved in the environmental field, environmental engineering for at least 35 years — 15 of that was spent as an environmental specialist working for Sarasota County in the stormwater program, so I feel like I've got pretty good knowledge of this area,” said Robert Wright.
“The bottom line is that what we experienced with the last hurricane, Hurricane Debby, is something that could easily happen again,” Wright said. “What is keeping areas from being flooded is open land and forests. Those are so incredibly important.”
Debby passed Sarasota as a tropical storm Aug. 5 and made landfall further north as a Category 1 hurricane. County officials say the stormed caused more than $50 million in damage to Sarasota.
Other spoke of the anguish of seeing so many Sarasotans suffer after the flooding.
“I am a commercial realtor who's been involved in development. So I'm not anti-development in any way, but over my 24 years, I have seen the changes that the developing has made," said Lynn Inganamort, who saw people’s homes flood nearby. "The first community goes in, and obviously you're requiring a certain standard from them, but that builds the land up slightly higher, so the water runs down.”
“You know, it's just heartbreaking watching their lifelong belongings thrown out to the road as if they were trash.”
The plan for 3H in south Sarasota would create 14 new neighborhoods, and include 250,000 square feet of commercial space, as well as apartments, townhomes, single family homes, bike trails, nature areas and a new school.
“You know, this, this really isn't about Pat Neal. He's a great guy, well liked in the community,” said Thomas Fastiggi, another speaker during public comment.
“What this is really about is science. And the science is hydrology. It's the movement of water in this community,” he said, noting that heavy rainfall from storms has become more common in recent years.
Earlier in the meeting, commissioners heard from Bob Laura, an engineer in the stormwater division of Public Works.
He said the county adopted its design standards for a 100-year storm, or a 1% annual chance of 10 inches of rain, back in 1992.
“At that time, we adopted the Southwest Florida Water Management District code and modified it to fit our stricter standards,” Laura said. “And to my knowledge, it has not been updated since then.”
Commissioner Joe Neunder said he had “heartburn” over the prospect of approving new homes.
“I am having some heartburn that we're at ‘92 standards. In 1992 I was in high school, you know? Water is incredibly destructive, and we are all Sarasota County residents. We are all neighbors. We are all family," Neunder said.
Commissioner Mark Smith appeared stunned that water and rainfall have not kept up with changing standards to withstand stronger winds from hurricanes.
“Excuse me, I'm still kind of taken back by the fact we're still using 1992 standards for rainfall,” Smith said. “I'm an architect, and you know, the Florida building code gets updated every three years.”
Commissioners also heard from Sarasota County emergency services director Rich Collins that Debby dumped far more rain than the National Weather Service predicted.
Debby was forecast to produce 6-8 inches of rain in Sarasota, but some areas saw 18 inches, all from late Sunday to Monday morning, he said.
"What we experienced was (an) outer band of the eye wall that came off and extended directly through the same spot in Sarasota County for multiple hours. They call this training. It is a line of storms that just continually drop water over the same spots,” said Collins.
“I think it's important to take a look at a historical perspective. So let's take a look at Hurricane Ian. Nineteen inches of rain fell in the North Port area.”
More recently, in June 2024, “we saw six to eight inches of rainfall in downtown areas of the city of Sarasota in three hours, with flooding in St Armand’s Circle and in the city itself,” Collins added.
The deluge from Debby was almost twice what the area was designed to handle, said public works director Spencer Anderson.
“It's obviously beyond our stormwater regulation of 10 inches in 24 hours,” added Anderson. “Primarily [the flooding] is due to just the historically significant rainfall that was experienced in these basins.”
