Some cities try to stem the flood in South Florida

The population of South Florida has far outpaced the region's ability to manage flooding events such as hurricanes. Given the geography of the region, there is little room for an alternative.

Recently, some cities have identified creative ways to solve the problem.

"For water management in South Florida now, the mantra is, 'Storage, storage, storage,' " said Ken Todd, water resource manager for Palm Beach County. "You're going to get the rain, and you don't want that in someone's house, so where do you put that water? You've got to create storage, and it has to be in a place that nobody cares about."

The primary way to ease flooding in South Florida is through the thousands of miles of canals that direct stormwaters out to sea. Because there are so many housing developments built so far inland, those canals can't handle the ever-growing flow of water, leaving inland cities waiting days for their floodwaters to recede.

That's why some have created temporary storage basins to hold the water while the system floods out. That's no small task in South Florida, a region that's almost completely built out — from the shorelines to the east to the boundary of Everglades National Park to the west.

Todd says some cities have responded by using vacant lots and buying up abandoned properties to create small detention basins.

That idea was used in the historic Westgate neighborhood in Palm Beach County. After Hurricane Irene inundated Westgate in 1999, officials got together with federal, state and local agencies to create a water basin in the middle of the neighborhood. The detention basin, which is also used as a park when water levels are normal, takes in the excess water from the neighborhood until floodwaters recede.

Officials did the same, on a much larger scale, in the Miami suburb of Sweetwater.

After the city drowned under 19 inches of rain during Hurricane Irene, then 20 inches during a "no-name" storm in 2000, city officials worked with a variety of government agencies to develop a 1 billion-gallon detention basin on the western edge of the city. The city can pump water into that basin — an unused plot of land surrounded by 6-foot earthen levees — until the rest of the city is dry.

Jose "Pepe" Diaz, the mayor of Sweetwater at the time, said the city also developed smaller basins to hold water, a process other cities have adopted in recent years. Diaz said too many portions of South Florida see almost daily flooding, which spells big trouble when a hurricane hits.

"Our system is antiquated," said Diaz, a Miami-Dade County commissioner. "Pipes are cracking. All these places are growing, but the infrastructure is not in place. If we get hit by another Andrew, it'll be catastrophic."