Resilient Lee drafted initiatives to improve housing and potable water

WINK News is diving deeper into documents that explain how $1.1 billion in federal money will be used to help housing and infrastructure in Lee County after Hurricane Ian.

Tuesday, Resilient Lee released dozens of documents explaining how $1.1 billion of federal funding could help Lee County bounce back from Hurricane Ian.

Housing is one of the eight branches of the Resilient Lee plan.

February 2023, Lee County formed it’s recovery task force after Hurricane Ian and came up with Resilient Lee. The goal? To build back smarter and stronger.

Lee County Commissioner and Resilient Lee Chairman Kevin Ruane said the funds from the federal government will be divided between housing and infrastructure.

Under housing, there are seven initiatives with lots of ideas, including buying out homeowners prone to flooding and supporting housing repair-reconstruction program initiatives, something Soyna Layour of Lee County said should be top of mind.

“Why are people still homeless?” said Layour. “This is a 911 sense of urgency. Let’s get teams together. Teams of 20, put them in neighborhoods door to door with paperwork, applications, seeing what the need is. Let’s come back. Now we collab. Now we fix the problem.”

Another initiative is to attack the shortage of affordable housing in Lee County and spark new housing development through financial assistance and policies.

Layour said the initiatives are words with no action.

“If history repeats itself, I want everybody that sits on that roundtable to hear the sound of my voice. If history repeats itself, the blood is going to be on your hands because I’m telling you, between loss of lives and the loss of everything, we’re not ready. Do something now,” said Layour.

Another critical issue? Drinking water.

When Hurricane Ian hit Lee County, nearly 10,000 people lost their homes. Tens of thousands more lost their drinking water for days, even weeks.

“You know, when you go through a Category 5 with 15-foot storm surges,” said Ruane, “when it affects potable water in water, natural resources, drinking water, you start to get into it, and then we start to see the way our structure is.”

Hurricane Ian highlighted the vulnerability of our infrastructure. Ruane said that clearly includes our water system.

“We had breaks, we had transmission lines that were damaged,” said Ruane “We had a potable water situation down on Fort Myers Beach. We had to build a new plant. We’re doing necessary repairs, but like everything, the destruction of the storm required certain immediate repairs, and then some long-term replacements.”

Resilient Lee’s potable water initiative focuses on improving water delivery and distribution.

The objective? To establish a self-sustaining water infrastructure, even in the aftermath of natural disasters.

“God forbid we get another hurricane in or worse,” said Layour. “We’re gonna still have that same conversation, or is this time someone going to step down and say, we really got to get this done. I’m for the potable water. But let’s do it.”

To be fair to task force members, it’s not that simple.

As the plan points out, “The interconnection between various regional water utilities should be seamless, efficient, redundant and coordinated.”

That will take time.

Lee County residents can read through the plan and give online feedback for the next 10 days here. Afterwards, the plan will be sent in for approval.