Next month, St. Petersburg’s new Resident Task Force pilot program will kick off with a bus tour through the flood-prone neighborhoods of Shore Acres and Riviera Bay, as part of a collaborative effort to explore innovative flood mitigation strategies.

“The city is finally giving residents a real voice,” said Kevin Batdorf, President of the Shore Acres Civic Association. “This is what we’ve been asking for — a proactive approach to finding solutions that can hopefully prevent future flooding or at least reduce the risk to our homes.”

The task force was established through a partnership between the City of St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, bringing together community leaders and an independent engineering firm to address chronic flooding issues.

“As part of this effort, they’ll be developing a topographical map of the flood-prone areas to pinpoint hotspots,” Batdorf explained. “It’s a chance to see the problem from a fresh perspective and consider solutions that may have been overlooked.”

Batdorf noted that Hurricane Helene last September inundated 82% of homes in Shore Acres, affecting 2,196 residences with floodwaters entering homes.

Vanessa Pugliese, President of the Riviera Bay Civic Association, said her neighborhood saw similar devastation, with all 1,250 homes impacted — some experiencing garage flooding, others worse.

“Some parts of the neighborhood still have RVs and storage pods in driveways,” Pugliese said. “We’re seeing problems we’ve never had before, and a lot of it seems to be runoff from all the development around us, draining straight into our canals.”

Pugliese has long pushed for the city to dredge the neighborhood’s canals, which fill with sand after storms.

“We’re hoping the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council recommends dredging,” she said. “The canal’s depth has decreased so much, you can barely fit a kayak through it now — and it’s even worse since Helene.”

Plans to raise a seawall along one of the canals last September were delayed due to the hurricane. Pugliese said she’s hoping for more ambitious ideas from the task force but remains cautious.

“We need major infrastructure solutions, not just for Riviera Bay but for the broader area feeding water into us,” she said. “It’s been a year since our last meeting, and there’s been no progress — no significant projects started or finished. We’re understandably skeptical.”

According to the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, the task force will focus on infrastructure upgrades and maintenance, leveraging proven strategies and data-driven analysis to guide future projects.

The public bus tour is scheduled for May 10, with the Shore Acres tour running from 9 to 11 a.m. and Riviera Bay from 1 to 3 p.m. Seating is limited, and residents may need to follow in their own vehicles.

Additional neighborhood tours will cover the North, West, Central, and South regions on May 17 and 31. A citywide public workshop will be held on August 9 at the Coliseum.

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(Image credit: Northeast Journal)

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