ORLANDO, Fla. — Hurricane season will be here on Saturday. Municipalities from all across Central Florida over the past couple of years have been working to either mitigate, or plan on how to address drainage.

What You Need To Know

  • Orange County begins project in 2023 to help with storage depth

  • 23,000 dump truck loads of muck and soil have been removed

  • Ponds currently can hold 10.6 inches of rain in 24 hours

  • Total cost of the project is $23.2 million

One of those areas is the Orlo Vista community in Orange County, which saw severe flooding to homes during Hurricane Ian.

The county has been working on trying to correct some of the flooding concerns, but county leaders say the project will not be done until next year.

Flooding was a major problem in this Orange County community in 2017 during Hurricane Irma as the storm produced more than 9 inches of rain in just 28 hours.

In 2022, during Hurricane Ian, it brought more than 12 inches in just 24 hours.

The Orlo Vista drainage improvement project to increase storage depth began in March of last year, but the $23-million project is still not finished.

Marisel Jacovo saw her home nearly halfway filled with water during Ian.

“When I tried to open the door, it wouldn’t open,” Jacovo says as she is standing in her home that has no dry wall in it. “We waited for the fire department coming to open the door from the outside, I couldn’t do it from the inside.”

It then took days for the water levels to recede. By that time, her home was ruined. Her home is now just a shell of what it once was.

As her home is put back together, her and her husband now live in a shed in the backyard. They added a wall air conditioning unit just so they can be comfortable sleeping at night.

Aside from rebuilding her home, she is hoping the county’s drainage improvement project, which includes a new pump station and force main, will protect against a 100-year storm event. That type of storm may produce roughly 14.5 inches of rain in a 72-hour span.

So far, 23,000 dump truck loads of muck and soil have been removed. The excavation of three retention ponds will be complete this summer.

Jacovo says she’s nervous entering this storm season with the project still not finished.

“Really scared,” Jacovo states. “Still to this day I feel under the water, I feel like it is going to happen again, again and again, I say, ‘Oh Lord.’”

One of the final elements of this project has been trying to acquire components for the pump station. County officials say because of a nationwide supply chain shortage they still don’t have some of the parts needed, and due to that, they say the project will now be done in the spring of 2025.

In its current state, the excavated ponds will have the ability to hold 10.5 inches of rain in 24 hours. County officials also say if a storm threatens the area, they can pump the ponds down three to four days in advance to help with storage.