Watery woes in Archer spark debate

ARCHER – A deluge of controversy surrounds the City of Archer as the town debates how to address the issue of flooding near the retention pond in Holly Hills.

Holly Hills is prone to flooding because of its bowl-like shape. The city secured a grant in 2010 to renovate the nearby retention pond to help with the overflowing water, but some citizens in Archer want the city to do more to prevent floods from heavy rainfall.

“I really thought that this would fix the problem once and for all,” said Roberta Lopez, former mayor and city commissioner of Archer, in an email to the city manager. Lopez has been outspoken about getting the city to take action over the flooding.

The grant to fix up the retention pond was meant to help out with small rain events, and was never meant to be a solution for heavy rainfall, said City Manager Al Grieshaber.

“If Mrs. Lopez was led to believe otherwise, she was misled,” he said. “The City of Archer, at the present time, cannot eradicate flooding in heavy accumulation rainfall events,” he wrote in an email to Lopez. There was a 35 percent increase in rainfall this year, Grieshaber said. He quoted a statement from the engineers who worked on the pond, stating that complete mitigation of the flooding cannot and would not be achieved with the project. The grant came from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The most recent major flood in Holly Hills happened last month. “When you see the pictures, you’re not going to believe it,” Lopez said of the flood.  

Lopez started a petition to get the city to have engineers look at the retention pond to make sure it is working as intended. Alachua County recommended sending engineers to examine the pond, Lopez said. She spoke to Leslie McLendon, a planner for growth management with the county.

 McLendon said she was trying to offer suggestions, but it was not an official recommendation. She also suggested a silt buildup might be something to check for.

Blockage in the drain for the retention pond might be part of the problem, Lopez indicated in an email to City Commissioner Gabe Green.

“If you go over in that area and look you will see the drain in the retention pond on the east side, and you may see a lot of dirt in the bottom of it,” she wrote. However, retention ponds do not have drains, replied Grieshaber.

“Unfortunately, you have a gross misunderstanding of retention ponds or basins,” he wrote. “There are no drains in retention ponds, only inlets to allow the water to flow in to the basin and outlets or overflow pipes to channel the water from one retention area to another.”

“The operative word is retention,” he added. “The water is retained so it can naturally percolate into the ground.”

At the Sept. 9 commission meeting, the mayor, city manager, city commissioners and citizens discussed how to protect Holly Hills from flooding. There was agreement among the commissioners and city manager that there was a problem, but there were different ideas on how to solve it.

Archer needs to look outside the retention pond and find other solutions, Grieshaber said. He presented a plan to get grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to buy the homes in the affected area. FEMA would purchase the homes at a fair market value, but nobody would be forced to sell their house. The houses that are bought would be demolished, turning the property into empty space. Even if some residents held out and didn’t sell their homes, the extra space from the newly empty lots would provide more surface area for the water, lessening the severity of the floods, Grieshaber said. Due to the geographical limitations of the area, the retention pond cannot ever completely mitigate the flooding, he said.

Lopez opposed the FEMA solution. The city needs to do something now to help the people of Holly Hills, she said.

Commissioner Fletcher Hope urged the city to internally examine the issue.

“I think we need to act on this,” he said. “We have some liability.

Commissioner Doug Jones disagreed about trying to solve the problem internally.

“Leave it to the engineers,” he said. “It’s not going to be solved in a city commission meeting.” He suggested the city let experts find a solution, rather than the commissioners trying to make one themselves.

The city will have the retention pond inspected for silt buildup and other problems as a short-term answer, but for the long-term, Grieshaber said the city will be sending out letters to the residents of Holly Hills to gage whether there will be support for the FEMA plan.

The focus should be on an immediate solution, not a long-term plan like the buyout idea, Lopez said.

“We have got to take care of our citizens,” she said.

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