Improving Resilience and Reducing Flooding

Some residents may wonder why the Southeast Seminole Heights Flooding Relief Project includes construction in South Seminole Heights and Old Seminole Heights. There are several reasons:

• To add capacity to the City’s existing stormwater infrastructure, thereby improving resilience
• To reduce flooding in parts of Old Seminole Heights and South Seminole Heights as well as Southeast Seminole Heights, and
• To accommodate small future stormwater projects.

Stormwater in Seminole Heights is currently directed to the Hillsborough River at Comanche and Paris avenues as well as to Lake Roberta. This current stormwater drainage system is undersized, leading to localized flooding, in particular along Comanche. Our project involves installing a new large outfall to the Hillsborough River on West Crest, as well as tying our new box culvert from our new outfall to the Comanche outfall, the Paris outfall, and diverting stormwater going south on Nebraska to Lake Roberta into our new storm system. By tying these separate drainage basins together, it will allow for more efficient distribution of stormwater and will better direct stormwater away from homes and businesses in all three neighborhoods, improving flooding conditions in several areas:

• Along Central Avenue just north of Hillsborough Avenue
• Along Comanche between North Ola Avenue and Central Avenue
• On Nebraska Avenue, north of Hanna
• Around Lake Roberta
• On Florida Avenue between West Crest and Frierson
• And on multiple streets in Southeast Seminole Heights, including Caracas, Ellicott, Cayuga and more.

In addition to significantly reducing flooding within the watershed, the Southeast Seminole Heights Flooding Relief Project also creates a new backbone of the City’s storm sewer system that can be extended with smaller future projects to address other nearby drainage issues.