OCALA, Fla. — After hosting several meetings on flood mitigation, the City of Ocala walked its residents through its final Fisher Park retention pond design Monday evening, prompting residents to green light the construction of the initiative that would remove 37 homes from flood hazard zones.

What You Need To Know

  • A newly designed retention pond would save 37 homes in Ocala from flooding

  • The initial project faced backlash as residents worried over losing a nearby park

  • The newly designed project is well received among residents and is slated to be completed by September

“This is a flood mitigation project,” said Sean Lanier, city engineer for the City of Ocala. “We’re expanding this drainage retention area so that it has more capacity.”

The project, mainly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), plans to take some of the greenery of Fisher Park in Marion County and redevelop it to house a larger retention pond that is able to sustain larger amounts of water and excessive flooding that the area is naturally prone to. The new plan will include a trail for residents to enjoy.

However, the initial plan faced backlash, prompting the City of Ocala to halt its construction late last year.

Since then, a number of meetings have taken place where city officials explained the benefits of the proposed retention pond to residents and locals addressed their concerns to the city over losing nearby greenery.

“It actually ended up being a more efficient design because some of that green space is actually uphill. You’re digging into a hill and not gaining a lot of volume,” Lanier said of the new mitigation project.

Homeowners in the area believe the new retention pond is the only chance at saving their homes from natural disasters that bring excessive water to their front yards.

“The flash flood hit us out (of) nowhere,” said Jordan Raney, whose entryway was inaccessible due to the flooding Hurricane Irma brought to Central Florida in 2017. “The entire neighborhood essentially turned into a lake.”

For many in the area, the newly designed project, slated to be completed by September 2024, is a fair equilibrium between the city wanting to mitigate flood and locals wanting to preserve a park with greenery they can access.

“When you’ve been in a situation where your home is about to flood and you’re going to lose everything, any sort of thing they (the city) are going to do that’s going to fix it, of course I’m pumped. I’m here for it,” said Raney.