ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH, Fla. — Photos of a flooded St. Augustine Beach neighborhood look like they were taken during a hurricane. However, they were taken during a heavy rainstorm in June.
Some neighbors blame the city and a new drainage pipe which that they said is not draining well their community well at all.
"The water I saw retained in this neighborhood, I have never seen before," Karen Kempler remembered that June storm. She's lived in the Ocean Walk neighborhood in St. Augustine Beach for 34 years.
"I hadn’t seen water up [at the foundation] of my house since the hurricane of 2016," Kempler told First Coast News.
But the flooding in June was from a rainstorm that neighbors say brought three inches.
"It was unnerving because we’ve experienced rain events of this size for many years," Robert Vignato said. "For the rain we got, it was far too much flooding."
Kempler and her neighbors say the problem comes from a City of St. Augustine Beach public works project last summer. The city filled in a drainage ditch that ran along Mickler Boulevard for a quarter-mile, just outside the boundary of the Ocean Walk neighborhood. In place of the drainage ditch, the city installed a drainage pipe.
"Now there is no way for the water from this end of the neighborhood to access that pipe," Kempler said.
There are a few grates along the stretch to collect the water and usher it into the pipe.
"A 14-inch pipe which is a quarter of a mile long does not equal a drainage ditch which is 10x6 for a quarter-mile," Vignato said. "There use to be the ability to house a lot more water."
Neighbors said they have contacted the city asking why the ditch was filled in and replaced with a pipe.
"They said neighbors had erosion problems," Kemper said. "They may have solved their erosion problem for a couple [of] neighbors, but they created a flooding problem for twenty plus neighbors."
First Coast News reached out to the City Manager. He said the public works department is working on a proposal to remedy the flooding in Ocean Walk. Specifics were not available.
"I would like to see the drainage pipe removed and restored to the original drainage ditch," Vignato said. "It was a design that worked."
Neighbors are concerned if it flooded badly with hard rain, what will happen with a hurricane?
"There are going to be many houses in Ocean Walk that will flood," Kempler said.