Summer is approaching and residents across Flagler County know the afternoon thunderstorms will put their neighborhood’s drainage capacity to the test.
In Palm Coast, city staff presented the City Council with its annual stormwater update, providing a review of the city’s infrastructure and maintenance efforts.
Lynn Stevens, the city’s deputy director of stormwater and engineering, led the presentation, which touched on canal and swale maintenance to help localized areas; ongoing capital improvement projects aimed at improving the overall stormwater infrastructure; and more.
Following are some highlights from the presentation.
What are the main stormwater projects in Palm Coast?
The city’s stormwater capital improvements plan features several ongoing and recently completed projects.
Staff highlighted three that are under construction.
The city is dredging almost a mile of sedimentation from the Pine Gove Canal. Construction is currently delayed due to some unfavorable field conditions, caused by unsuitable substances found near the bank of the canal. The project, however, is expected to be finished by December.
Work to replace the P-1 weir is also underway. It aims to upgrade “the aging P-1 weir along Belle Terre Parkway to improve stormwater management and system reliability,” according to the city.
“Crews have recently installed and backfilled the new headwall at the site in preparation for construction of the new weir,” the city website says. The project is also expected to be finished by the end of 2026.
Another major effort is the Colbert Lane Drainage Improvement project. Work involves removal of four existing 72-inch reinforced concrete pipes at Colbert Lane, near the Waterfront Road intersection, and then reconstruction with four concrete box culverts.
Staff noted that “during construction, a temporary bypass road will be built to maintain flow of traffic and removed once crossing has been completed.”
The project, the city hopes, will “increase stormwater capacity and conveyance … and flood protection to three residential areas totaling 879 homes.” Work is slated for completion by early 2027.
Projects that have been completed, staff noted, are K Section drainage improvements, and the London Waterway expansion.
Palm Coast staff gives canals, ditches and swales maintenance update
Stevens also spoke about the recent maintenance efforts in the city’s canals, ditches and swales.
The city manages a network of 1,222 miles of swales, 58 miles of freshwater canals, 177 miles of ditches, 13 lakes, and over 1,700 catch basins.
“It is a ton of work,” Stevens said. “There is a lot of people behind the scenes working every day to keep that stormwater system operational.”
Swales are “designed to hold water,” she said. They “discharge into the 177 miles of ditches, the ditches then discharge into the canals.”
“If we have a failure in the canals, the entire system fails,” Stevens said.
New equipment has helped the city improve more swales in 2025 than in previous years. By the end of the Fiscal Year 2025, staff completed 55 miles of swale improvement. Historically, the had city averaged 40 miles of swale work per year. Stevens expects crews will exceed the 2026 goal of 60 miles.
Swale work orders, some of which have been in place since 2019, have also dropped, Stevens said, from 1,058 in October 2024 to 654 in October 2025. As of May 11, 2026, that number is at 341, “with only a handful from as late as 2022.”
Stevens said that those work orders are all “reactive,” meaning they come from residents’ complaints.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Palm Coast staff talks ongoing stormwater projects, maintenance
Reporting by Brenno Carillo, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
