SANFORD, Fla. — Channel 9 witnessed a contractor on Friday pumping Hurricane Ian floodwater contaminated with sewage directly into Lake Monroe in Sanford.
The contractor was pumping water out of Regetta Shores Apartments.
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The city of Sanford said no permit had been issued for the work, and the County even put out an alert telling drivers to avoid the area because the contractor had run the pumps across Seminole Boulevard to pump the water into Lake Monroe.
About 10 minutes after Channel 9 crews showed up asking questions, the work stopped.
Read: Seminole County businesses deal with flooding, flickering power in Hurricane Ian aftermath
The water had been sitting in the parking lot for the last 13 days.
And while pumping all that water out is helping residents, another problem may have been created. Neither Seminole County nor the St. Johns River Water Management District said they knew anything about this plan until Friday afternoon.
The contractor told Channel 9 it was given verbal permission by someone at Sanford City Hall, but the public works director sent us back this short statement saying: “they are pumping stormwater from their parking lot into the lake and they did not ask for the city’s permission.”
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A spokesperson for the St. Johns River River Water Management District told Channel 9 that it plans to send someone out to the complex to investigate as part of its fact-gathering stage. Authorization would be needed to pump that stormwater into Lake Monroe, and the spokesperson said the district’s primary concern when evaluating something like this is avoiding flooding someone else downstream by moving the water.
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