The Elephant in the Room

On Wednesday, I attended Dam 101, a media event put on by Manatee County Government to help local outlets better understand the functions of the dam and reservoir at Lake Manatee in light of the flooding following Tropical Storm Debby. It was informative and, in some ways, impressive. However, no discussion of current and future challenges in our watersheds can be of much use without addressing the elephant in the room: rampant development guided by little more than the wishes of the developers themselves.

Tropical Storm Debby dumped an enormous amount of rain—17 inches—on the area surrounding the dam in a very short period of time. Manatee County Deputy Director of Water Resources Katie Gilmore explained that the county dropped the dam from its typical wet season level of 38 feet to 36 feet, about the same as it did for hurricanes Irma and Ian. That provided some cushion. However, it was quickly absorbed.

As Deputy County Administrator Evan Pilachowski, who oversees utilities, put it, the county gets into a complicated guessing game in such situations. On the one hand, it has to consider how much water may or may not fall. On the other hand, it has to be remembered that the sole purpose of the reservoir is to provide drinking water for much of the county. Once the dry season comes, there’s little telling how much precipitation will be received or how much water will be lost to evaporation. So, taking it down too low in an abundance of caution can severely impact the facility's ability to perform its intended function.

To their credit, county officials have taken ownership of the abysmal job that was done in terms of communicating with residents near the dam during Tropical Storm Debby. During the storm, the county issued breathless text alerts through its IPAWS system, often using all caps to warn of imminent flooding.

“Manatee Dam doing strategic release to cause dangerous swift moving water and flooding. Leave area NOW. Shelters available. Highwater vehicles being staged in area. Call 311 for information. Use 911 for emergencies ONLY,” read one message. “Manatee Co. FLOOD IMMINENT from Lake Manatee Dam release. Swift water and flooding imminent. Shelters are open. Call 311 for information. Use 311 for emergencies”, read another.

No press conference was held, and nothing was posted to the county’s social media accounts, website, or YouTube page. Some citizens were understandably enraged by the lack of details, and others who experienced intense flooding shortly after the alerts understandably believed they were flooded by a dam release, even when that was not the case. The county did a good job explaining the timeline and impacts on Wednesday, even though it was probably far too little, far too late, at least in the eyes of residents who suffered flooding impacts.

But as I stood there and listened to county staff assert that the intensifying storms we are experiencing due to climate change are going to continue presenting additional challenges while acknowledging that rezoning to intensify development in and around our major watershed will exacerbate those challenges, I couldn’t help but wonder why they had not been using the same breathless urgency as those IPAWS alerts in warning the commissioners who keep making those votes.

In reality, I didn’t have to wonder because I already knew. For the past four years, our county has been run by the very developers it is supposed to regulate through its established policies. I think that Pilachowski is a talented professional who we were lucky to find. Still, I don’t imagine it took him long to figure out that he got his job because the current board had gutted any part of county leadership that told them anything other than what they wanted to hear. Gilmore also strikes me as a talented professional driven by a passion for her career field, but that describes too many of the fine folks the county has lost or fired over the past few years.

Asinine policies such as policy 2.1.2.8, which has allowed for a massive increase in density east of what had been the county’s Future Development Area Boundary, should never make it to a meeting because “the experts” commissioners so often claim they cannot in good conscience break with should be stopping them dead in their tracks with their expertise. Only we know from the utterly senseless way the county dismantled its wetland protection policies at developers’ direction that the staff is there to give cover when they can or will. If they won’t, commissioners will just see that someone from the outside is brought in to consult (read, tell them what they want to hear).

Just this spring, Manatee County Commissioners approved a request allowing Neal Communities to add 224 additional units to a major development that includes adding homes practically adjacent to Lake Manatee. Residents objected to the even greater density because of its position on an already overburdened SR-64 but even more so because of its proximity to the county reservoir at Lake Manatee. No mention was made then as to what that could mean should we suffer the kind of “100-year” floods that have become annual events, or now as to what impact all that clear-cut dirt-ridden space out east had when 17 inches of rain quickly fell on what had once been land suitable to absorb much of it.

Residents constantly hear from commissioners, “Staff recommended it, and they’re the experts. " In turn, they hear staff say, “We’re not the policymakers; we just follow directives.” What a tight little circle jerk that creates.

Manatee County has real problems, most of which are caused by the fact that rather than experts and representative policymakers planning our growth as a community, developers have given direction, and everyone else has reverse-engineered an outcome that supports their greed-driven desires regardless of the future detriment they represent.

In the August primary, Manatee County voters collectively said, enough. But while it looks like developer puppets will no longer hold a majority come November, there is still much work to be done to both unwind these senseless policies and begin a return to a meritocratic bureaucracy in which the number one qualification those at the top bring to the table is not mere fealty to the developers and their minions.

Van Ostenbridge, Satcher, and Turner may be gone, but stooges like Charlie Bishop, Courtney De Pol, and Nicole Knapp will remain until if and when a new board musters the will to clean out the closet. We once had a great county government, one our community could be proud of, but it took only a few short years to dismantle it. People like Pilachowski and Gilmore suggest we can return to better days, but it will take true vision and real leadership, both on the board and within the administration, for that to happen.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here.