ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — City leaders in St. Augustine celebrated the completion of a flood mitigation project Thursday in the Court Theophelia neighborhood, an area that has long dealt with heavy flooding during storms.
The city held a ribbon-cutting on Bannan Avenue, between Court Theophelia and Court Louise, to mark the project’s completion. Officials say the upgrades will improve drainage and provide greater protection from localized flooding.
The project also includes the city’s first green stormwater infrastructure installation — a pilot design officials hope to replicate in other St. Augustine neighborhoods that experience severe flooding.
“We invited the neighborhood elected officials, all our project partners, to come and really kind of celebrate the conclusion of the project,” said Jessica Beach, St. Augustine’s Chief Resilience Officer.
“And we have our first green infrastructure project installed, so we’re excited to showcase that it’s a pilot project for the city.”
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Beach said the system was designed with more than flood control in mind.
“There’s landscaping that was carefully selected. There’s soils that clean up the water, so it has a water quality benefit,” Beach said. “So we wanted to do flood protection, but also (improve) water quality.”
The project was funded entirely through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Resilient Florida Program.
City leaders say they hope the project can serve as a model for flood mitigation efforts in other St. Johns County neighborhoods and beyond.
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