Charlotte County says they don’t have drainage issues in Port Charlotte

A community left waterlogged over and over again is ready for it to end.

WINK News has shown you flooding that tormented the people of Charlotte County countless times. In Port Charlotte Wednesday night, several neighborhoods saw flooding of several feet from a rain storm.

Port Charlotte neighbors say the drains are causing the issue and say they aren’t working properly. Now, the county is responding to that theory.

With another threat of heavy rainfall hitting Southwest Florida next week, neighbors are concerned that flooding will happen again. According to WINK Weather Authority, Port Charlotte could get between 4-7 inches of rain during the upcoming storm.

Charlotte County says they are on it and are assessing and cleaning the drains.

“We had teams of people out today in the hardest hit areas, and it’s a great time to do it because there’s still water in the swales, and it’s really easy to see if there’s a drainage being blocked somewhere because you’ll just see, ‘hey, there’s dry spot,’ and everywhere else is wet,” John Elias, the Charlotte County Public Works Director said.

The county says they didn’t find any drainage problems. They say the rain just didn’t have anywhere to go.

The drains will become a problem if homes begin to flood, which the county says they didn’t.

“What happened was we caught up after a drought in the spring, and we’ve caught up very quickly. And with that water all happening over a relatively short amount of time, a couple of months, you don’t have the ability to absorb it or evaporate it quickly enough for that water to not potentially cause issues with standing water or roadways or even into homes,” said Patrick Fuller, the Charlotte County Emergency Management Director.

Four inches of water fell in an hour and a half on Thursday in Port Charlotte.

“What that means is our systems are going to be overwhelmed, and there’s going to be water on the road. What I would say to people that say they have a drainage issue, is that if you had water on your road last night, and you wake up this morning when the water’s not on the road and it’s in the swales, that means the drainage system has worked,” Elias said.

The county said if there is still water three days after a rain storm, then that’s a problem that needs to be reported.

Neighbors say the flooding Thursday was worse than hurricane Helene, and the county said that’s expected because Helene was a wind and storm surge storm, not a storm that brought much rain.

“If you lived in Florida for any amount of time, you are somewhat familiar with summer rainfall systems. The increased saturation or the high levels of saturation we have in our system, and anywhere you have a lot of rainfall, it could some localized flooding could occur,” Fuller said.