By Bryan Nelson
The city is happy to report that the pumping down of the Piedmont-Wekiwa chain of lakes has begun—after clearing one final hurdle.
Preliminary plans had water flowing directly from Blue Lake to Lake Piedmont using a stormwater pipe under Wekiwa-Piedmont Road, but this would require over a foot of water to be added to Lake Page before the drainage well could take on additional water.
With help from St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD), we quickly secured the additional permit from Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to pump water directly from the ditch into the drainage well, but we needed to add one more pump to do it.
We needed to make sure the Orange County 100-foot storm-drain under Piedmont Wekiwa was clean to allow maximum water flow, which required our stormwater crew to blow out all the obstructions in the underground culvert.
We also needed to make sure that the vegetation in the ditch taking water from Blue Lake to the culvert was cleaned out as well. Our team at Apopka Public Services was permitted to dam up the stormwater ditch next to the Christ International Church and pump water directly out of ditch coming from Blue Lake and into the drainage well on Lake Page. This will save us over a foot of additional capacity in Lake Page for the rainy season.
The SJRWMD has allowed the city to pump down Border Lake from the current elevation of 76.74 ft. to 75 ft., Lake Jackson from 80.7 ft. to 79.5 ft., Lake McDade from 80.61 ft. to 79.5 ft., Lake Piedmont from 80.13 ft. to 79.5 ft. and Blue Lake from 77.32 to 76.5 ft. These lake drawdowns will give us plenty of capacity as the summer rains begin. Each of the five pumps will be monitored daily.
I would like to give a HUGE SHOUT-OUT to our engineering team, Apopka’s water and wastewater crew, the stormwater team, Orange County Public Works, SJRWMD and DEP for helping us to resolve this crisis. Each partner played an important role in making sure we got to the finish line. We can now focus on the long-term solution to move excess water from these lake basins and add that to our reclaimed water inventory. I have already had contact with DOT and Mayor Demings about our collective roles in solving the long-term flooding in the Border Lake-Lake Cortez basin.
