DEBARY, Fla. — Floods from Tropical Storm Fay and other storms destroyed homes in DeBary and left entire neighborhoods abandoned. Now city leaders say they've fixed their flooding problem for good.
Officials on Thursday opened a new system of pumps and pipes that will control storm water for the entire city.
Vito Multari made sure to go straight to the mayor for reassurance at the unveiling of a new storm water management system that was dedicated Thursday. His was one of more than 100 homes that flooded between 2004 and 2008 as tropical weather dumped rain on a city that just couldn't handle it.
"If I would have known, I would have never built my house there," Multari said.
Multari was lucky. Some homes were simply abandoned, worth hundreds of thousands but built too low to save from future floods.
"Some houses shouldn't be built in low lying areas. What they've tried to do with this system is make certain the areas that are at an adequate level are protected," Rep. John Mica said.
For the rest of DeBary, FEMA, the state, and the city have dumped millions of dollars into the new system that should stop what happened last time. Much of the system is underground, but at lift stations pumps and pipes help regulate the level of retention ponds to help control flooding.
DeBary Mayor Bob Garcia says, without stimulus money, residents would have faced stormwater fees that more than tripled, from about $80 a year to more than $300. Now the project is paid for and moving the water, Garcia says, will be much easier than moving the project along was over the past four years.
"With the paperwork, and working with the different agencies and that, it was a lot of work and a lot of time," he said.
The system cost $6.3 million. More than $4 million of that came from a FEMA grant. Another $1 million came from the Florida Department of Transportation. The rest of the funding was split between the state and the city of DeBary.