Brickell floods, even without a hurricane. Miami solutions can’t come quick enough | Editorial

Hurricane Ian hadn’t even crossed the tip of Cuba when some roads in Brickell were overwhelmed with water as outer bands swept through South Florida, days before the devastating hit on Fort Myers.

The problem in the Brickell neighborhood quickly went away. The water receded, and Miami-Dade County was spared the wrath of the monster hurricane, this time.

But even that fleeting moment of rising waters is a reminder that our flooding problems in Miami are real and persistent, impending hurricane or no.

It doesn’t take a catastrophic storm to create terrible floods in Brickell. In June, yet another Brickell-area flooding video went viral when an after-midnight torrential rain turned streets into rivers. The video captured one woman trying to push a car out of thigh-high water. Nearby, another woman slogs through a torrent of water rushing down the street, nearly getting hit by an oncoming car trying to get out of the flood. The water reached to the top of car tires, stranding vehicles.

And those are far from the first such scenes. We’ve reached the point in this community where we shrug and say, “Brickell always floods.” And that’s not right.

There are plans to fix the issues. The city installed pumps to help remove excess water that inundates that area and other spots known to flood. When Hurricane Ian was approaching, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said all permanent water pumps were working, and seven additional portable pumps were available if needed, according to a report by NBC 6.

There are also broader plans in the works. As the Miami Herald has reported, Miami’s stormwater master plan calls for spending about $3.8 billion over the next four decades to improve the city’s drainage, part of its fight against climate change and sea-level rise. The state’s Resilient Florida program and federal money combined helped Miami win $100 million in grants to start tackling some drainage projects, while the city’s Miami Forever Bond set aside $192 million for flooding and resilience projects. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently decided to downgrade flood risks for the Miami area, which Suarez contends will push down insurance premiums in a bit of welcome financial relief.

And there’s the county’s sea-level rise strategy, the first in the state when it was announced last year, which includes options such as building at a higher elevation and with stronger requirements. Miami Beach, perhaps at Ground Zero for these problems, also elevated roads and installed pumps when it became clear that sunny-day flooding was worsening.

These fixes and others, which still won’t fix everything, are wildly expensive, utterly necessary — and can’t happen soon enough. New development continues to rise in the Brickell neighborhood. Communities like Allapattah, Little Havana and Flagami also suffer with flooding. Seas are rising; this is only going to get worse.

We need to push the long-term solutions as fast as possible. Businesses in Brickell shouldn’t have to erect flooding barriers for every storm. Residents shouldn’t have to wade through water over their knees whenever there’s a cloudburst, let alone a hurricane.

This story was originally published October 10, 2022 at 5:12 PM.