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Resident urges enforcement of golf-course waterway maintenance after neighborhood flooding
Summary
A Fairway Forest resident told commissioners that sediment and overgrowth in a golf-course waterway contributed to street and home flooding and urged the county to enforce maintenance requirements recorded in letters to the golf course.
At the Aug. 19 Pinellas County commission meeting, resident Ralph Hoffman of Fairway Forest, speaking on behalf of Tarpon Lake Village Homeowners Association, told commissioners his neighborhood suffered road flooding during recent storms and that two homes, including his, flooded during Hurricane Milton.
Hoffman said the community — developed in the early 1980s near the Lensbrook Golf Course — reported stormwater problems to county staff through online reports and that limited maintenance and accumulated sediment in the golf-course waterways reduced flow. “I will argue that the neglect of the storm water management contributed to the flooding,” Hoffman said. He added that county inspections dating to 2021 noted deficiencies and that letters the county sent to the golf course required clearing overgrowth and sediment to restore conditions shown in 2007 aerial photos.
Hoffman said limited county action after inspections prompted only partial dredging and that the golf course had done “as little as possible.” He noted county letters warned of fines for noncompliance and asked the commission to enforce those letters, saying: “I’m asking for the commissions here and the county to enforce what they send out in the letters, meaning to enforce the golf course to clear out the waterways and make this a safe neighborhood.”
Commissioners did not take formal action during public comment; county staff later discussed watershed and debris grants in the consent agenda but did not announce a specific enforcement action on the record during the meeting.
(Reporting note: quotes and claims reflect a public-comment presentation; county staff described separate grant work for channel debris removal later in the meeting.)
