Related county webpages include interactive map
On March 12, before the Sarasota County Commission delved once again into stormwater issues in the wake of the 2024 storm season, the director of the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Extension and Sustainability program in the county provided the board members details about a related study that was completed last fall.
Lee Hayes Byron explained that county staff and a consultant had used a state grant that the county received in 2022 to produce a Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan in accord with the 2021 state law that established the Resilient Florida Program. The goal of the initiative, she said, is to “prepare communities for the impacts of sea level rise, intensified storms and flooding,” as noted on a slide that she showed the commissioners.
Working with a consultant — the Taylor Engineering firm of Jacksonville — county staff members focused solely on county-owned assets and critical community assets, not any structures in the private sector, she pointed out.
“The cities did their own analyses,” Byron added.
The analysis was completed in the fall of 2024 and submitted to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), Byron noted.
Details of the county report are available on webpages that went live that day, Byron added.
Staff and the consultant “developed a comprehensive GIS [Geographical Information System] database and spreadsheet,” she said, which enabled them to identify assets in regard to exposure to various hazards, as detailed in the state law. That inventory, she explained, was the first step in the process, with specific categories set:
Then the assets were analyzed, Byron continued, to determine how vulnerable each is to four types of hazards: tidal flooding, storm surge, rainfall-induced flooding and sea level rise.
“The exposure analysis applied the state’s flood hazards to develop maps and tables to illustrate flood depths at the current levels, as well as in 2040 and in 2070,” Byron noted.
The next step was completing a sensitivity analysis, she said, “which recognized that some asset types would be more damaged than others for the same flooding scenarios.” She explained, “For instance, natural areas can withstand more floodwaters than buildings and critical infrastructure.”
A tiered sensitivity rating was applied to each asset, based on the specific flooding scenario, she continued, with resulting rankings of “Low,” “Medium” and “High” risks for every asset.
Then, Byron said, the internal project team focused on six geographic areas of the county. Those were determined on the basis of the locations of the highest number of assets with the greatest risk levels. Those areas were the Phillippi Creek Watershed, Siesta Key, Casey Key, Nokomis/Nokomis Beach, Manasota Beach and the south Myakka River watershed.
The next step she said, was to develop an adaptation plan. Included in that was a ranking of projects by priority for implementation. “The high-level recommendations outlined best practices,” Byron continued, as well as “categories of adaptation projects,” including avoiding risks, “accommodating and protecting against these risks, and establishing procedures and criteria for when to … pull back from vulnerable areas.”
“Some of the solutions that were suggested are nature-based, some are temporary; some are “significant infrastructure investments,” she pointed out. Others call for education and monitoring, she said.
“The county has already implemented significant resiliency strategies for buildings and infrastructure,” Byron noted, such as living shorelines and bioswales. Low-impact development and habitat restoration are other options, she added.
For examples of strategies, she cited floodproofing initiatives, elevating sewage lift stations and strategies involving roadways, depending on whether the latter are evacuation routes.
In wrapping up her presentation, Byron told the commissioners that the Sarasota County Vulnerability and Adaptation Plan will be shared with members of the community through various communications strategies. Staff already has shifted to the implementation stage.
“So that’s a quick survey of two years of work across multiple departments,” she added.
‘A very thorough process’
When Chair Joe Neunder asked for any comments or questions from the board members, Commissioner Teresa Mast told Byron, “I know this was a very thorough process that you went through …”
Commissioner Mark Smith asked, “Given the assessment, how long do you think it’ll take to harden or lift the facilities that you found to be vulnerable?” He also asked whether the recommendation in some cases would be to demolish structures and rebuild them.
Byron replied that she felt it would be helpful to the board members to review the spreadsheet provided with the report. As for his question about the timeline, she added, “I think it is an issue of commitment and prioritization,” with a focus on the facilities at highest risk and the earliest likelihood of risk.
She did note, “The risks are expected to change,” which is why the team and the consultant used state data reflecting conditions projected for 2040 and 2070, as well as current conditions.
“The word for me is … ‘prioritization,’ ” Commissioner Ron Cutsinger told Byron. The commissioners, he added, will have to figure out where to start.
Cutsinger did offer his praise for the fact that the team already has identified potential grants to assist with the next steps. If she needed extra staffing to pursue applications for such funding, he encouraged her to ask the board members for approval of those additional workers.
