Shore Acres Flood Mitigation Project<\/a><\/p>\nResidents used the meeting to talk about continued flooding concerns during storm season. Still, residents are counting on to reduce flooding in that area.<\/p>\n
Markus Koeppku is one of those residents in Shore Acres who was affected by the 2024 storm season. His home flooded and when it came time to make his next move in protecting his home he knew what to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve lived here for four years,” he said. “And the first three years living here, I had to evacuate every hurricane season.”<\/p>\n
After experiencing his first flood during the 2024 hurricane season, he and his family have been renting a place. Now they are raising their house 14 feet above the ground. Markus said it will be done in a few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s just mental security, you know, for the future. You know? Just don\u2019t want to go through this. If I renovate my house, I only want to do it once, you know?,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
St. Pete’s flooding mitigation plan for Shore Acres and surrounding areas would build a new pump station and replace part of a culvert on Connecticut Avenue.<\/p>\n
Brejesh Prayman, Director of Engineering and Capital Improvements for St. Petersburg, said he is optimistic about the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat it will lead toward is what we would typically see during a heavy rain event during the summer \u2014 mitigating that on-street flooding and also providing that resiliency, because now we\u2019re going to mitigate that backflow from the stormwater system,\u201d said Prayman.<\/p>\n
Accoring to city officials construction is set to begin in October 2026 and will take about 20 months to complete. Funding for this project comes from different sources, Prayman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that project, that funding will be used to cover the pump station, the pipe replacement, some utility adjustment and also restoration after the construction money. Some of it is partially grant funded, but a lot of this money is coming from the stormwater fees that our residents pay,\u201d Prayman said.<\/p>\n
So as far as this hurricane season, Prayman said the city is focused on staying prepared.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo during this hurricane season, we\u2019ve been active with our maintenance operations,” he said. “As well as continuing to install backflow preventers for some of the lower-lying and heavily impacted locations.\u201d<\/p>\n
So for residents, it\u2019s a waiting game.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just need to have help. You know, for us, it\u2019s also financially a tough situation,\u201d Koeppku said.<\/p>\n
Koeppku hopes that this plan will help many residents not just in Shore Acres but in St. Petersburg who have been impacted by storms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 St. Petersburg officials and community members met Wednesday to discuss the city’s latest flood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,3125,1802,27600,7088,115,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,221],"class_list":{"0":"post-179109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-hurricane-helene","10":"tag-hurricane-milton","11":"tag-julia-hazel","12":"tag-manatee-county","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-st-pete","15":"tag-st-pete-headlines","16":"tag-st-pete-news","17":"tag-st-petersburg","18":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","19":"tag-st-petersburg-news","20":"tag-tampa","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}