Over the past few months Seminole County officials have been updating residents on potential fixes for insufficient drainage areas along certain basins.

What You Need To Know

  • Officials say a study of the Lake Monroe basin found 24 areas of concern

  • They say homes that are currently not in a flood zone could be added to one when the study is complete

  • The fix for each concern has a different price range, estimated to be from $100,000 to $20 million

The Lake Monroe basin study began in 2020, but has since been amplified following last year's hurricanes Ian and Nicole, which caused severe flooding.

Experts say it is important to note that the downtown Sanford portion of Lake Monroe that saw major flooding is not part of the study. 

Officials say the study found 24 areas of concern that have insufficient drainage.

Area residents say flooding is a concern.

“We are at a low point right now,” said Joe McKinney, who lives on a boat on Lake Monroe. “I haven’t seen it much lower than that. high point is it gets to the seawall up here.”

He said it was rough riding out Hurricane Ian last year.

“It was really rocky,” McKinney said. “The water, of course, was coming up real quick, and you were just rocking back and forth.”

Ian left its mark in more ways than one. Pilings and trees with water lines are still visible from when the waters were at flood levels.

During the storm, water entered Lake Monroe from communities like Judy McMickle’s, who said it took days for the water on her property to eventually find its way to Lake Monroe. Her problem, however, is it doesn’t take a hurricane to see flooding in her part of the county off Michigan Avenue

“We started seeing intermittent flooding after heavy rains about two to three years ago,” McMickle said. “We attribute that to the development happening along Orange Boulevard and a lack of addressing the infrastructure and the downstream impact.”

Her road is now one of the two dozen areas of concern the county is hoping to fix.

“Either the storm drains are too small, or the canals are too small, or we have over topping,” Seminole County engineer Jeff Sloman said. “These 24 areas are the ones we are going to develop drainage concepts for.”

The fixes are still likely a few years away, but the water will soon head to McKinney.

“That’s life on the lake,” he said, smiling. “It’s just we get a lot of water, and it’s gotta go somewhere.”

For people like McMickle, her water needs to make its way to Lake Monroe more quickly, and plans and funding to do that is what is going to take time.

Officials say many property owners in the county will likely see their flood maps change as well when the  study is completed — which could take years.

Because of that, they say it is possible for a home not in a flood zone now to be added to one in the future.

Another big question was about the cost to fix the areas of concern.

Officials said numbers are still in the works, but noted that a project from this study could cost anywhere from $100,000 to $20 million to fix.