GOTHA, Fla. — Mery Fernandez walks to pick up the mail at her home, which she and her husband can no longer live in.

“You remember when we would sit on the porch?” she recently asked her husband.

The Fernandezes, DeHarts, and Nehrling Gardens are all reside near each other on Lake Nally in west Orange County's Gotha community. The gardens have been there since the 1890s, but the two families planted their own roots in Gotha more than a century later.

The water level of the four lakes in the area — Nally, Fischer, Mills Pond, and Gotha Pond — have all mysteriously risen, and each is causing severe damage and costing people their homes.

Orange County has not said what the cause is or has been able to determine what has made lakes and ponds to raise so quickly in a matter of years.

Concerns of rising water levels began in the late 1980s, and with ongoing flooding and rising water levels, residents of Orange County feel their local government has turned their back on them.

“We did an elevation test before we purchased it," Fernandez said of her home.  "We had insurance check that it was not in a flood zone.”

But now, the Fernandezes' property is mostly swamp, and their house built on the lake has been unlivable for more than a year.

In 2017, the Fernandezes built a dock to county code, which was permitted by the Orange County. Just a year and a half later, that same dock is impassable, submerged in weeds and water.

Dr. Mark Rains has a doctorate in hydrologic sciences from the University of California, Davis and currently teaches at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He says plant life and current conditions can give you answers.

“The landscape is like a textbook. You can read it, and it's telling you a story," Rains said. "The soils are telling you a story, the vegetation is telling you a story. They're telling you more about their long term and more recent history.

“If you look at the plants and ... they're particularly dying, (they're) telling you, 'I’m not just inundated, I’ve been inundated for a long time.' That is telling you a story,” Rains said.

In 2006, a resident of Gotha sent a letter to the St. Johns River Water Management District with photos, showing dirt from the development of Gotha Estates, which later became the Braemar neighborhood, being pushed into Lake Nally. 

That same year, the president of Bio-Tech Consulting Inc. wrote a letter to the county, stating that they “believe that the lake exceeded the previously recorded maximum stage elevation due to construction associated with Gotha Estates.” The letter also said Gotha Estates construction "results in a loss of lake volume.”

This suggested that when dirt was moved into the lake, the lake lost its depth, meaning it could hold less water.

Paul and Stacy DeHart bought their multi-acre home with a mother-in-law guest house, thinking it would be their "forever" home.

Since then, Lake Nally has encroached on more than half of their property and is now just a few feet away, making the mother-in-law guest house unlivable.

“All this was grass, just like this was," Paul DeHart says, pointing to 4-foot-high vegetation on his property. "We were looking at putting a volleyball pit and a fire pit and building out this area. We had no idea it would get wet.”

What the development also failed to do on its grading plans was mark the DeHarts' home. Where the home should be, there's a label for "unplatted." According to Orange County’s website, the DeHarts' home should have been.

“I think this is a bigger issue with land use and development in this area,” Paul DeHart said.

The DeHarts hired Harris Civil Engineers to conduct a survey and do their own research on causes to the rising water level at Lake Nally. Part of the findings suggested that the stormwater system for the Braemar Estates development is not working as designed — that there is supposed to be a swale on the south lot line, but there isn't. That swale is supposed to discharge water from the back of the lots to a neighborhood retention pond.

The Harris Civil Engineers study also says that according to the Orange County Property Appraiser's website, it also shows that the lake is wholly owned by the neighboring properties, inclusive of the Orange County Board of County Commissioners. It also says the county has performed operations on the lake in the past to include pumping and water monitoring tests.

Fernandez recalls encounters in the past with county employees who were studying the lake.

“We are just measuring the water level, that's what they kept saying," Fernandez said. "There is nothing we can do, and we asked if you could pump somewhere else because it had been done before. Um, nope.” 

In September 2019, Orange County assistant attorney Georgiana Holmes wrote a letter to attorney James C. Washburn with the subject line, "DeHart/Fernandez." In that letter, she says, "The Braemar subdivision has two retention ponds designed for the 100-year runoff volumes and at this time, the county denies that either retention pond is failing or performing incompatible with design."

However, the problem is that the dry ponds are not functioning as designed.

According to building plans, the retention pond next to the DeHarts' house is designed to be a dry pond, which means water should only be held or seen for a short time. Last year, oftentimes the dry pond appeared to be a small lake next to Lake Nally, retaining water.

“Yes I am very upset, and I was even angrier a year before," a frustrated Fernandez said. "We tried to ask for help, and we weren’t getting any. To me, that was very frustrating, because I knew this was not Mother Nature.”

The Fernandezes have already had to leave their home, and the DeHarts are bracing for what this summer’s rainy season will bring, because they may be the next to move out of Lake Nally Drive.

Spectrum News 13 asked to speak with Orange County officials on camera repeatedly for months at the beginning of the year regarding the Gotha lakes. They repeatedly turned down our requests and said it was a complex issue. The county did say it was conducting its own research into Gotha, and in April, CDM Smith and Pegasus Engineering provided an update, which Spectrum News 13 obtained from Gotha residents. 

As for the DeHarts and Fernandezes, they have hired an attorney and are determining what to do next.