Belleair Stormwater Flooded Culvert

Last updated on March 27, 2020

Belleair stormwater excess.

Last August, a stormwater culvert that runs in front of our home got clogged—caused by a lack of appropriate maintenance by County/Belleair.

The open culvert carries away Belleair’s stormwater excess. The stormwater was nearly at our front door, already washed away our landscaping. Only the second time in 20 years the water got that high and also ruined our landscaping.

Trying to keep Belleair stormwater runoff away from the foundation of the home. I asked Belleair to assist me in unclogging the stormwater culvert.

Belleair Town Manager, J. P. Murphy, said they’re not allowed to do maintenance because of Mehlenbacher status as a county right of way road. Upsetting, to say the least.

However, J. P. Murphy told me he’d have his (Belleair) “public works people see if they can reach an agreement with the County to either perform maintenance on the same regular schedule as the town or to allow us to perform additional maintenance.”

Since it took Pinellas county 3 months to come out to clean and scrape out the culvert covering it with sod. Like we’ve done for 20 years. We unclogged and cleared it out the best we could. Thankfully rainfall was minimal after that.

It will be 5 months since Pinellas county has performed any maintenance on Mehlenbacher Rd.

Belleair’s certainly must shoulder some blame regarding the stormwater runoff that goes into Belleair’s runoff system. Causing flooding on Mehlenbacher. Fueling an already bad situation by installing baffle boxes on Mehlenbacher. Allow construction of new drainage.

I only hope Belleair’s Town Manager asked Pinellas public works as he promised, asked if Belleair’s public works people can assist with maintenance. We’re only talking about 4 homes.

The front of my home looks like Mogadishu. So, once again, I’m in the process of restoring our front yard landscaping, incurring unnecessary expenses, for the third time. Florida’s rainy season is only a few weeks away. I certainly don’t want a repeat of last year’s flooding.