JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Brown, murky water sits at the end of a driveway on Huntington Forest Boulevard in Jacksonville.
“We’ve never had this issue until last week,” said Sabrina Perez.
Last week the end of Sabrina Perez’s driveway almost looked like a boat ramp.
“Even when it stops raining, it just doesn’t go down,” she said.
She shared a video with News4JAX where people can be seen taking boats in her neighborhood.
“I can’t get when it gets too bad,” Perez said. “I can’t get to and from my house or my car. I have four dogs here. My grandmother has been staying with me. She’s 93 years old, so it’s hard to, like, get her back and forth if I need to get her anywhere.”
She said neighbors who have lived here for more than 40 years have never seen flooding like this,
The water eventually went back down but after more rain this week, it’s back up again.
“I measured it one day at the bottom of the driveway here, and it was 16 inches,” she said.
Her neighborhood looked like so many others last week, from Old St. Augustine Road to San Marco to St. Nicholas.
It had a lot of people wondering why, causing Mayor Donna Deegan to speak about some of the problem areas on First Coast Coast Connect.
“I was asking Nina Sickler in public works about this. Is this a storm drain thing? She said most of the neighborhoods that are having these issues were built before we had the modern infrastructure and the storm ponds and other things that can collect the water.,” Deegan said.
She said neighborhoods like San Marco will continue to have issues with flooding after long bouts of rain.
“Back when the Better Jacksonville plan was proposed, what was that like 24-25 years ago? Because of our rising seas, our rivers have also risen between 3 and 6 inches since then. So, you had San Marco just a little above sea level which is now almost at sea level and that is going to continue to get worse,” Deegan said.
She says only about 20 percent of the flooding issues were due to clogged drains.
“It looks like the drain has been clogged,” Perez said.
Perez just hopes it does not get worse.
“This normally doesn’t happen,” she said.
On First Coast Connect Mayor Deegan also spoke about the new pumps for LaSalle Street and San Marco Boulevard that she anticipates will be finished in early 2025.