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.