County’s new stormwater director, Commissioner Smith and stormwater consultant Suau to make presentations and answer questions
On Saturday, Oct. 4, from 10 a.m. to noon, the Phillippi Creek Coalition will host a Stormwater Discussion Panel at the South Gate Community Center, which stands at 3145 South Gate Circle, Coalition members have announced.
The panel will comprise Sarasota County Commissioner Mark Smith, a Siesta Key resident who was elected to the board in November 2022; the new county Stormwater Department director, Ben Quartermaine; and Stephen Suau, a stormwater consultant in private practice who has been assisting the county staff with a variety of issues, a news release says.
Following a 15-minute presentation by each panel member, the release adds, audience members will have the opportunity to submit questions on index cards, which will be collected and shared with the speakers.
The Phillippi Creek Coalition consists of the Forest Lakes Homeowners Association, the South Gate Community Association, members of Supporters of Action Now for Dredging (SAND), and residents of Pinecraft, the predominantly Amish and Mennonite community in the area of Beneva Road and Bahia Vista Street, the release explains.
Seating will be limited, the release points out. For more information, the public may email flccehoa@gmail.com.
Coalition members began appearing before the County Commission in January, urging the board members to pursue what they described as critically overdue maintenance in Phillippi Creek. Many of them testified during Open to the Publiccomment periods of commission meetings that they had experienced repeated flooding of their homes during the 2024 storm season because of the build-up of sediment in the creek.
Ultimately, as a result of commissioners’ concerns that county staff needed to put far more emphasis on stormwater maintenance, Commissioner Tom Knight proposed the creation of a Stormwater Department, instead of the county’s continuing to have a Stormwater Division as part of the Public Works Department.
The board members first voted unanimously in early June to approve the establishment of the new department; they reaffirmed that vote during their intensive workshops held on July 1 and 2 regarding the county’s proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1.
After the July vote, county administrative staff advertised for a director for the department. That resulted in the hiring of Quartermaine, a professional engineer who had worked on stormwater issues for the county years ago before taking a position with the Stantec consulting firm in Sarasota. In fact, as his biography points out, Quartermaine was the lead engineer in the design of one phase of the Celery Fields Regional Stormwater Facility.
He formally began work on Aug. 11. His first presentation to the County Commission is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 5, during the board’s fourth stormwater workshop. That will begin at 9 a.m. in the Commission Chambers within the County Administration Center located at 1660 Ringling Blvd. in downtown Sarasota. It also will be live-streamed through the county website.
A biography for Suau, which the Coalition members provided with their announcement of the panel discussion, notes that he is a professional engineer, as well as a hydrologist and soil biologist. His “experience in watershed restoration, stormwater quality and floodplain management … spans decades,” it adds.
Suau, too, is a former county employee, having served as director of the stormwater program at one time. His biography further notes, “Following the design and installation of the Master Stormwater System for the Palmer Ranch, Mr. Suau oversaw Sarasota County’s initial floodplain modeling and mapping program between 1998 and 2001, as well as the implementation of the Celery Fields and Dona Bay projects.”
Further, Suau’s biography points out that he undertook an analysis of severe flooding that occurred in portions of the county during Tropical Storm Debby’s rainfall inundation in early August 2024. It was Suau who discovered that a breach in a berm resulted in the damage to homes in the Laurel Meadows community.