The Villages Water Management System
 

So far, with the storms I have experienced her in The Villages, there has been zero accumulation of water in the street in front of my home. Anyone know how much rain water would stress our water management system in a specific time frame to the point that storm water would enter homes?

I have one intersection that still has standing water to the top of the curb. It is a low lying area and is likely not draining because the wetlands/prairie/swamp near us is very high.

The water would need to rise at least two more feet to come close to entering the nearest building. I have no idea how much rainfall it would take to add another two feet of water.

Never seen the ponds around here so high. The folks who designed this system did an outstanding job

I have never witnessed a build-up of water in the middle of the roads (only along the edges) so the drains and soakaways seem to be doing their job.

The water level in the preserve behind us (into which our roads drain) is at least two feet below the fence keeping those pesky gators out of my garden. A few years ago it was virtually at fence level, but still two feet below the house as the garden slopes. Other times the water hasn't even been visible from the house, so at least a foot lower than today.

They built plenty of slack into the system, but never say never.

The drainage system is designed for a "100 year storm event", which is a storm that has so much rain, it's likely to occur only once in a 100 years ... or, a 1% chance of occurring in a given year. In the case of Sumter County, this would mean a storm event which produces approximately 12" of water in a 24 hour period.

The drainage designs have some amount of "built in margin of error", but as always with a computer analysis, the conclusions are only as good as the input.

2 back to back "50 year storms", potentially could yield similar results as a 100 year storm.

I'm not sure how long it takes for the system to recover from a 100 year storm, I suspect it's 72 hours. In other words, if we got 12" of rain in a 24 hour period, it would take 3 days for the system to handle a subsequent 12" of rain, in a 24 hour period.

Just because an event occurred that was greater than a 100 year storm (or back to back events), that doesn't mean homes would flood. It means that the storm water drainage system would be over-whelmed and there would be accumulations of water, where there shouldn't be any. In most cases, the majority of homes would still be above the storm water elevation. Localized conditions could vary.

https://www.districtgov.org/PdfUpload/Storm%20Water.pdf

If I'm understanding this correctly, system is designed to handle at least 10"/24h in retention ponds.

They can drain 7"/24h through inlets with spillover into golf courses.

We had as much as 12" south of 44.

As mentioned above, should they overflow, streets in most cases are graded to flood first followed by yards before water reaches homes.

We have an intersection near me where the sewer drains on opposite corners are both backed up with debris, and are no longer capable of draining efficiently at all. They need to be completely emptied out. There are even weeds growing up through them, it's so bad. So during the hurricane, of course the road was flooded. There was no place for the water to go.

You might contact someone about this if not already?

Cleaning them is up to you.

I don’t agree. This is District Property Management job.

I would think so

About at capacity now in many areas. Our street basins are nearly full and could only handle a limited amount of additional water before flooding. The water can no longer drain.

The engineers and architects who design the elaborate drainage system in The Villages deserve medals. Nine inches of rain at my Courtyard Villa in 22 hours, yet there was no water accumulation in my yard or even on the street. Everything soaked in or ran off.

A couple years ago we had 11" of rain no problem. The north end of the Villages seems the best

With hurricane Irma it was able to handle 18 inches of rain in 24hrs. Beyond what it was designed for.

Alhambra Pond Add to Enrique and Botello off of El Camino
 

I've noticed that the pond at Alhambra was practically empty up until Milton struck us.
Anybody know if it has developed another $100,000 a leak?

My realtor who lives in Middleton measured 13” of rain at her house. South of 44 got significantly more rain than northern Villages. Very few water hazard issues were encountered down here.

Yes, this has happened on a couple of streets here in DeLuna that are still flooded 3 days post Milton. The streets are next to the postal station, which has a huge marsh/preserve behind it that is fuller than we’ve ever seen it. The water level is 1-2 ft from the top of the 8 ft wall surrounding it. It looks like a lake now. Every heavy rainstorm or hurricane/TS event these streets are badly flooded. We personally live a couple blocks from the postal station, but on the opposite side of Marsh Bend Trail (our main through road), and no streets have flooded by us. They have some major drainage problems that aren’t being addressed that are very frustrating for those residents.

I understand frustrating, but how would you propose they address those drainage "problems?"

It may not be legal to pump water out of a preserve area but if it was, where would they put the water? Pumping it into the streets won't help since it will flow right back in. All the other ponds are at capacity so the water can't be moved there. The golf courses are either saturated or are being used to lower the water-reclamation ponds to increase capacity for the sewer system. Where should the water go?

Water
 

. The area near the intersection of Whittington Circle and Mabel Terrace in DeLuna flooded in a few miles radius due to poor drainage of street drains, despite being reported many times by numerous residents. The nearby retention pond has a liner which causes water levels to stagnate. The next district 13 meeting will be heavily attended by us residents .

The Villages drainage system was designed to handle a 100 Year Storm event. That's what we had and the system works fabulously.


A lot of folks get frustrated with the weather, but it's hard to change.

Perhaps you folks didn't notice, that the recent hurricane produced a 100 year storm event, which in Sumter County, means about 14" of rain. The Villages drainage system is designed to handle a 100 year storm event and it did. It is at design capacity.

As for a "retention pond" having a "liner" ... do you know for a fact it's a "retention pond" or is a "detention pond"? If it is a "retention pond" as you wrote, it is designed to HOLD water and not allow the water to percolate into the ground. That means it's likely to NEED a "liner" to do what it's intended to do. You and every other resident in the entire state of Florida could show up at the District Meeting and you'll just be wasting you time. That's what the design criteria was and the District doesn't have control over it ... the State of Florida approved the design.

Folks should learn their facts, before posting about technical issue they are not familiar with.

https://clcinc.co/detention-pond-vs-...right-for-you/

I suspect several of you would have a different perspective if you lived in Deluna on the streets described earlier. Especially when it’s recommended to shelter in place, told by the district they are monitoring with pre-staged trucks to pump when the water comes up to your lanai and only a several feet from where you sleep. This was reported to the district several weeks prior to the storm by many individual residents. This was preventable.

How? How could this have been prevented?

How deep is the water in the streets? Is it 4", 12", ___?? If the water is not yet up to your lanai then some might call that a success.

Even though it is "their job", if was in the area where my home is, I'd clean it out to protect my property.

We're in DeLuna and it was halfway up my driveway and covered half my front yard. The pond overflowed in the back by many feet and was less than 12" off my foundation. We stayed up all night concerned it would be in our house. We will probably get flood insurance now, even though we aren't in a flood area, because that was way too close. Our neighbor's lanai was completely surrounded and the area between our houses was flooded with the pond. I was basically on an island for two days and if we didn't have an SUV I wouldn't have been able to get out.

Weeks before Helene hit they could have moved the water from the so called trucks they said they had to either of the 2 ponds around the corner that never have water that our pond is not connected to. How about that for a solution?

Would that have been legal? If your pond is truly a natural pond and not a man-made retention pond with a liner then it might enjoy a certain level of protection against interference. It *might* not be legal to pump water out of it except to prevent homes from flooding.

Weeks before Helene hit there might not have been any indication that Helene would actually hit and certainly no indication that there would be a Milton, that it would grow as it did, and that it would dump this much water on our area.

I suppose asking how it could be prevented was a bad question. A better question would be what signs that there was something to prevent were ignored and what reasonable and legal actions were indicated but not taken? Monday morning quarterbacking is pretty simple, Saturday predictions and Sunday real-time coaching are much more difficult.

Record 20- 25 inches in 24 hrs Florida
 

The record for Florida is 20-25 inches of rain in a day 4 hrs south down in Ft Lauderdale last year.

Hindsight is 20/20 but it's risky to purchase a home next to a body of water not connected to the storm water management system.

There is very little outflow in the area so no place for the water to drain.

I don't know all the details, but no one has mentioned this area. I believe that the Daily Sun ran an article about this ( which I have not read). So, with those disclaimers upfront, here goes. Hurricane Helene raised the level of Paradise Lake in the Historic section enough to overflow and block the street on the lakes'northern perimeter. Several residents complained. The Villages Storm Management people pumped out the water and lowered the level of Paradise Lake, which was fortunate because there was no flooding during Hurricane Milton. I apologize for the vague details, but I just wanted something about this flooding event to be part of this thread.

I don't believe that you have anything to worry about for the NEAR future. However if we were taking about 10 to 15 years in the future, the story is different. Warm air holds more moisture and both land temperature and water temperatures in the Gulf and water rise have been increasing rather dramatically. If we project that rise in temperatures which is increasing worldwide forward for 15 years then home flooding in the Villages would be likely. No one (especially not me) can accurately predict even 5 years in the future. Overall, I think that no one likes changes that are negative and older people (like residents here) seem to RESENT and deny even small changes. So, I am just SUGGESTING that people read up on the Science and ramifications of the Earth warming. There are many changes happening at the Polar regions that COULD be premonitions of changes to the mid latitudes of the US and the world.

Ditto!!! The infrastructure in this place is amazing. The cleanup effort after the storm is amazing. Kudos to the water management folks and to those that control all the water pumping stations that regulate the distribution of water throughout the villages

Agree, the workers are doing a great job replanting trees, collecting and filling hundreds of dump trucks with debris to be hauled away.

Watching the new construction, they spend close to two years building the storm water systems.

I would not be surprised if 20-30% of our bond cost is to build those systems.

Uh oh, you might have given some people a new thing to complain about.

It's really quite easy, if you live south of 44 and your home isn't on stilts, buy flood insurance. If one was a long timer and heard that they were going to build in that area, many heads were shaking. Water, water everywhere and then the fear of sinkholes with so many ponds, streams and other water areas present. There will always be a threat in heavy rainstorms, just prepare for it.

A change of perspective regarding the golf courses... they are primarily water retention and detention areas. When the areas aren't in use for water storage, one is welcome to use the golf courses built within to make people think they have fine golf courses. It all balances out, one just needs to develop another hobby other than golf for the "closed" days.