A year after hiring a stormwater director, Sarasota County flood fixes remain years away

Illustrative file photo: an excavator maneuvers a dredging barge during a creek-dredging operation in Bulacan, Philippines, unrelated to Sarasota County's Phillippi Creek project. Photo: FBenjr123 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Resized; website wordmark added. Photo source · License

A year after Sarasota County paid $190,000 a year to bring stormwater veteran Ben Quartermaine back to run a newly created Stormwater Department, a joint investigation by Suncoast Searchlight, the Florida Trident and WUSF finds mixed results. Some ditches and culverts have finally been cleared, but staffing vacancies have barely improved, the maintenance backlog is growing again, and more than $80 million set aside for dredging clogged waterways remains largely unspent.

For residents of South Gate, Laurel Meadows and Pinecraft, who were flooded or trapped in their homes during Tropical Storm Debby, the most consequential delay involves Phillippi Creek. Quartermaine once expected to sign a permit to dredge the creek's middle section — where some of the worst 2024 flooding occurred — by spring of this year. That approval is now targeted for the end of 2026, and the newsrooms report the work itself could stretch into 2027.

Phillippi Creek middle-section dredge: shifting timeline

1. August 2025

   Ben Quartermaine hired at $190,000/year to lead new Stormwater Department

2. Originally expected: spring 2026

   Permit to dredge Phillippi Creek's middle section expected to be signed

3. Summer 2026

   Contractors dredge 1.7 miles of the creek, removing over 60,000 tons of muck

4. Now targeted: end of 2026

   County aims to get the middle-creek dredge permit approved

5. Possible: into 2027

   First dredging work on the hardest-hit middle section could begin

Source: wusf.org

Staffing gaps persist despite new hires

The department added 26 employees over the past year, but its vacancy rate only moved from 20% to 18%, according to the investigation. Ten field-crew positions responsible for maintaining canals, ditches and culverts remain unfilled, and the manager overseeing those crews has been vacant since spring.

The department's second-in-command job sat empty for roughly a year; a February posting drew just six applicants, only one of whom met minimum qualifications, before the position was filled in June.

Phillippi Creek dredging moves, but slower than planned

Contractors dredged about 1.7 miles of Phillippi Creek this summer, removing more than 60,000 tons of muck — work Quartermaine says has restored some of the creek's capacity to move stormwater and stripped out more than 200,000 pounds of phosphorus and 40,000 pounds of nitrogen that can fuel red tide-feeding algae blooms.

Harbor Acres and other neighborhoods still wait

Away from Phillippi Creek, longstanding drainage complaints remain unresolved. Harbor Acres resident Joel Schleicher first emailed the county about flooding in 2015; County Administrator Jonathan Lewis wrote in a February 2025 email that the problem is "20 years or maybe longer in the making." A 2021 study by Kimley-Horn put the cost of pipe improvements there alone above $7 million.

Officials debate the pace of fixes

Commissioner Mark Smith has defended Quartermaine's first year, saying the problems he inherited were "25 years in the making" and estimating the system will need about four years of work before it stops being a flood threat. But Kelly Brown of the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations told officials at a joint city-county meeting that the department's new maintenance map shows planned work without completion dates, and that telling residents to expect fixes as late as 2031 isn't fast enough for families still shaken by the 2024 storms.