Storms Aug. 5-9 washed over Anna Maria Island.
The volume of rain overpowered Bradenton Beach’s stormdrain system, filling drains and swales and leaving standing water in streets and yards. There was so much rainwater, the public works department brought in a truck and a pump to expel the excess runoff into Sarasota Bay.
“The cistern at Bay Drive and Bridge Street was overwhelmed with water,” public works director Tom Woodard said. “My guys had to go in there and give it a hand.”
The cistern is landside, near the walkway to the Historic Bridge Street Pier. The tank is enclosed by a chain link fence behind a bike rack and a few palm trees. Under normal rain conditons, it would collect stormwater from Bridge Street and flush it into the bay.
When it functions, it goes mostly unnoticed, but early Aug. 8, residents of nearby Pines Trailer Park complained of pumping sounds and street flooding.
“The city spends hundreds of thousands of dollars digging and building stormwater drains and it doesn’t work,” said resident “Ohio Bob” McClannon. “This is ridiculous.”
“We never had flooding before,” he said. “I’ve been here almost 17 years and haven’t seen floods like this before.”
Woodard said the stormwater drains are designed to filter the run off going into Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. “We’re still tweaking the system,” he said. “This isn’t a system to make water drain faster but to clean it better.”
The city, along with Anna Mara and Holmes Beach, is undergoing installation of stormwater filtration drains on rights of way. The drains include underground filtration, topped with sand and stone alongside the roadways. The stormwater is filtered in the trench and then empties into the bay waters.
Woodard said the amount of rain overpowered the cistern. On top of that, one of the drains leading into the bay was disconnected but, Woodard said, that problem is being addressed.
The city had earlier approved disconnecting the drain to slow the outflow of stormwater. By slowing the outflow, stormwater would seep more slowly through the filter pipes and into the cistern before being pumped to the bay.
“We learned from it and hopefully it’ll be better next time,” he said.
City engineer Lynn Burnett, who designed the drainage system, will give an update on its progress to the commission at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, at city hall.
