The Lake County Board of Commissioners decided this week to join a handful of residents in their fight against a new Leesburg subdivision they fear will cause flooding to the lands and roads around their homes.

Set to rise on just over 55 acres along County Road 44 and Treasure Island Avenue, Treasure Trove is a planned 110-lot subdivision. The City of Leesburg annexed the property and approved the zoning in 2023.

The developer purchased the Treasure Trove site in May for $1.6 million and filed development plans with the St. Johns River Water Management District, which approved its permit.

After the district approved that environmental permit, several residents who live within a mile of the project site — led by Lisa Hayden — sought an administrative hearing to reverse the decision.

Hayden said the elevation changes between the development and the surrounding area would undoubtedly cause water to run downhill towards the wetlands and nearby properties, a view she shared with Jerome Henin, president of Henin Group, the Winter Park firm developing the property.

“I told him, ‘You’re at the high point at 80 feet.’ We’ve got neighbors at 65 feet and a road at 60 feet, so it’s just going to flood,” she said. “They’re all nice, great people who even took the time to call me on a Sunday, and I have nothing against the applicant. But they’re saying they can get this water to flow up with pumps where, to me, it’s too much of a risk, and so we continue to fight it tooth and nail.”

Hayden and the other residents fighting the development compared the project to Silver Lake Pointe, a community approximately a half-mile south on CR 44, which has issues with flooding after heavy rainfall.

They are formally disputing Treasure Trove’s permit, approved on Aug. 7. Lake commissioners, also worried about flooding, unanimously agreed Tuesday to join them — an unusual move for county government.

Henin, in a statement to GrowthSpotter, said the challenge “lacks legal merit” and the proposed subdivision met the standards for a permit. The design has four acres of storm water retention ponds and another 5.4 acres of compensating storage abutting the wetland.

“The water management district has been presented with no valid legal basis upon which to deny our permits,” he said in the statement. “We appreciate that Lake County’s BOCC keeps issues like flooding at the forefront of their concerns for residential neighbors, and the City of Leesburg analyzed those concerns as well when approving our entitlements for this project.”

During a brief presentation on Treasure Trove at Tuesday’s meeting, Lake County Engineering Manager Jeff Earhart recommended commissioners not join the residents’ fight as the design appears consistent with county codes.

 

Still, commissioners said they decided to challenge the permit based on their experience with other projects in the county, up to code when approved, that currently face flooding issues as a result of inadequate regulatory constraints.

“There’s been some discussion about changing the codes throughout the water management district rules in the state of Florida, and also us changing some of our own regulations,” Chair Leslie Campione said. “I just think that we all know that the calculations that are used don’t take into account the volume and the velocity.”

Campione said extreme weather events and the cumulative effect of multiple neighborhoods dumping into a basin lead to flooding situations that infrastructure in adjoining neighborhoods cannot withstand.

“After Milton, that was sort of the crux of our concern,” she said. “Our codes didn’t really address the amount of volume we were experiencing in those major storm events, ones that actually come on fast and seem to be generating more volume than we’ve historically seen.”

Other commissioners agreed, with Sean Parks questioning if the additional water runoff could cause CR 44 to wash out.

“That may not be a concern often, but it is a concern because there could be some structural integrity to it,” he said. “Maybe that’s our connection to this, we don’t want it to overtop.”

In a 5-0 vote, commissioners agreed to join the residents in their petition to the water management district and request a 21-day extension, so they have more time to prepare for the administrative hearing, where they could oppose the permit approval.

“We understand the BOCC decided to file a petition anyway regarding our permit and are confident that once they analyze the facts of the case, they will understand that the current challenge presented by the neighbors lacks legal merit,” Henin said in his statement.

Should their extension request be denied, commissioners agreed they would direct staff to offer technical assistance to the residents in their fight.

“We are so grateful to the county because they have the gravitas that we don’t have as just five people out here,” Hayden said.

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at jwilkins@orlandosentinel.com or 407-754-4980. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.