Storm water pump stations drain out the water that accumulates on lower streets and discharge it into the bay.
Photo by Adobe Stock.

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The City of St Petersburg received two million dollars in state funding for the storm damage improvements project.

The project will take place at the Shore Acres neighborhood and it is a part of the St Pete Agile Resilience initiative to prevent flooding by working on sewer and water systems.

The initiative uses storm water pump stations which drain out the water that accumulates on lower streets and discharge it into the bay.

But it only works for rainfall, not for Hurricane surges such as Hurricane Helene in 2024.

Claude Tankersley is the City of St Petersburg’s Public Works Administrator and said the new pumps will have a big impact on the neighborhoods.

“So we’re talking about the ability to suck out and pump away four Olympic swimming pools every minute out of a neighborhood,” Tankersley said. “That’s a lot of water.”

With the grant, the city will build four new ones and Tankersley said they started planning for them in 2020.

A pump in Connecticut Avenue is in the final stages of design and is expected to go into construction later this year.

The one in Denver street is anticipated to start construction in 2028.

Tankersley said he believes all four new pumps will be completed in the next five years.

“When you have something as large as what we’re talking about, it takes a long time to really figure out how it would work, where it could work, what kind of impact it could have, how it would connect to other parts of the system,” he said. 

There are already four storm water pump stations completed and working effectively in St Petersburg – across Riviera Bay, Emerald Lake and 38th Avenue North.

Tankersley said the four new Shore Acres stations will cost about 100 million dollars.

As of now, the project has a total of three million dollars of state funding. 

Two million from the 2026-2027 state budget and another from the year prior.

Additionally, St Pete residents will be voting on whether to raise the stormwater utility fee to pay for the project quicker and have it completed before the expected 2031 timeline.