Local News | Rocky Road: Fort Lauderdale Neighborhood Says City Didn’t Keep Promise to Restore Canal View

FORT LAUDERDALE — Robin Richard used to walk out of her home and see mangrove trees planted long ago on the banks of a canal that runs through River Oaks.

Now she has a view of a shipyard.

A contractor hired by the city to upgrade drainage in the flood-prone River Oaks neighborhood chopped down the trees in late 2022. Stunned, Richard snapped photos of the trees coming down and sent “before and after” photos to the South Florida Sun Sentinel showing the drastic change from lush and leafy to stark and barren.

Back in November, city officials said the canal and landscaping would be restored by Christmas. The neighbors, however, are still waiting.

Fort Lauderdale officials now say the restoration won’t be completed until the end of January due to delays caused by end-of-year rainstorms. The low-lying neighborhood was hard hit by flooding in mid-November and also in mid-April, when a record rainstorm swept through town and left hundreds of homes damaged.

A few weeks before Christmas, Richard and her neighbors say they got another shock when crews working for the contractor dumped rocks on both sides of the canal.

Richard, whose home sits across from the canal at Southwest 20 Street and Coconut Drive, says she hopes to see trees and shrubs planted soon. But with all those rocks, she’s not sure where they will go.

“The rocks go all the way up to the road on Coconut Drive,” Richard said. “It doesn’t look like there’s going to be room for any new shrubbery or trees. But I’ve been told by at least five different (city officials) that they’re going to plant trees there and make it like it was.”

That’s not going to happen, city officials now say.

Rocks here to stay

“There’s going to be some landscaping redone, but it can’t go back to the way it used to be,” said city spokeswoman Arlene Borenstein.

The rocks, known as riprap, help prevent erosion of the canal bank and improve water flow, Borenstein said.

The contractor has already completed the time-consuming job of installing two massive water quality control boxes in the canal. The four-sided box culverts are each 10 feet by 10 feet with a height of 5 feet.

As for the rocks, they are there to stay, says Public Works Director Alan Dodd.

“The rocks inhibit plant growth and build-up of sediment in front of the culverts that would impede water flow,” Dodd said. “The city’s permit provided for vegetation removal to allow for replacement of the degraded culverts on SW 20th Street and restoration of the immediate canal to improve flows as part of the new drainage infrastructure work. As part of the project, the city attempted to minimize removal of trees and natural vegetation as much as possible, recognizing the priority placed on retaining natural features by the neighborhood’s residents.”

Surprise to neighborhood

Fort Lauderdale met with the neighborhood several times to let residents know what to expect when crews showed up to start work on the $26 million stormwater improvement project. But that detail about the rocks was never mentioned, Dodd admits.

“There have been more than 10 meetings with the community,” he said via email. “However, details of every facet of the project were not covered. There are numerous topics that could be discussed, but presentations focused on construction impacts, traffic flow and use of temporary pumps and flood control measures during the rainy season.”

Lisa Hoyt, who lives east of the canal, says she was taken aback to see rocks piled along the banks.

“We didn’t know it was going to be done,” she said.

Hoyt still has photos of the canal when it was lined with mangroves and palm trees. “Before they ruined it,” she added.

Ted Inserra, president of the River Oaks Civic Association, has been keeping a close watch on things ever since the crews showed up.

“If they would have told us it was going to look like this, there would have been an uproar,” he said one morning as he walked along the canal. “First they cut down all the trees and dammed off the creek. And then they put in these rocks. You can’t plant trees on rocks.”

Inserra says he remembers Dodd and his staff coming to the neighborhood’s civic association meetings to inform anxious residents about what to expect. He also remembers hearing at those same meetings that the canal would be restored.

“If they hinted at all that it was going to be left barren like this, that meeting would have gotten out of control,” he said. “We were told it was going to be restored the way it was. People can’t believe that’s the finished product. Everyone is asking me, ‘Is that it? Are they done?’ And that was not the deal.”

‘Rocks don’t breathe’

Mayor Dean Trantalis says he has sympathy for the neighborhood.

“We need to restore the landscape with as much greenery as possible,” Trantalis said.

The mayor said he was not told that rocks would be placed along the canal banks either.

“I think we need to remove as many rocks as possible in order to plant trees and other landscaping to green up the area,” he said. “Rocks don’t breathe. Trees do.”

Warren Sturman, the district commissioner for the neighborhood, suggested the Sun Sentinel contact the public works director for details on the restoration of the canal.

But in November, he had this to say: “Public works assured me this will return back to its original state.”

If you live in Fort Lauderdale, there’s a chance drainage crews will be coming to your neighborhood too. The workers, outside contractors hired by the city, are coming to save the neighborhoods from another record flood like the one that hit on April 12, when 26 inches of rain fell in a matter of hours.

A total of 25 neighborhoods are on the city’s drainage upgrade list, but flood-prone River Oaks and Edgewood were the first in line for what will end up being a $700 million investment over the next decade. The River Oaks/Edgewood project began in January 2022 and should be complete by December 2024, city officials say.

Other areas will have to wait years for those drainage upgrades. For some neighborhoods, the work won’t begin until 2031 and won’t be done until 2034.

Susannah Bryan can be reached at . Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan