By Terry Witt-Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Chiefland City Commissioners Monday took the first small step toward potentially using a state highway stormwater drain for U.S. 19 to capture runoff from a future paved city street.

                The city has long talked about paving NW 11^th Drive and making it a connector street that would allow residents to take a shortcut from U.S. 129 to the Wal-Mart Supercenter without encountering heavy U.S. 19 highway traffic.

            It’s still just an idea at this point. Working out an agreement to use the state stormwater drain would clear one of the hurdles that stands in the way of eventually paving N.W. 11^th Drive.

            The city commission has talked about paving the street for many years.

            The dirt street passes behind NAPA, ABC Pizza, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken is probably best known for having such deep potholes that small cars must carefully navigate along the edges of the craters to avoid problems.

            Florida Department of Transportation officials met last week with City Manager Laura Cain and Shane Keene, the city’s water superintendent and parks and streets director, to talk about whether the small DOT drainage pond could possibly be used by the city and state to capture stormwater runoff.

            The topic had been raised at the previous city commission meeting. Cain said DOT officials were receptive to the proposal under certain conditions.

            “What the DOT has proposed – they will let the city use their drainage pond. They will sign it over to the city. It will become city property,” Cain said. “The city will maintain it. They will take care of it, but DOT has the right to use that drainage pond for whatever flows off U.S. 19 into that drainage pond.”

            Cain said DOT officials indicated they would need to take a look at the amount of water flowing off city streets into the pond. It would be the city’s responsibility to provide DOT with information on stormwater flows off the street it intends to pave.

            “That information would come from us and go to DOT before anything changes, anything happens,” Cain said.

            The city has no engineer at this point. Cain said she is working on hiring an engineer.

            City Attorney Norm Fugate said there would have to be an analysis of how much water would flow from N.W. 11^th Drive to the stormwater pond and how much stormwater would flow off U.S. 19.

            Commissioners indicated they might want to share maintenance costs with the state rather than shouldering the entire burden.

            Responding to a question from Commissioner Rollin Hudson, Cain said DOT indicated that the retention pond was never permitted by the Suwannee River Management District and if the city took possession of the retention pond it would remain unpermitted.

            The retention pond appears to be a sinkhole. It rarely holds water. Cain said the discussion group talked about the fact that there are sinkholes in the city and that would have to be taken into consideration.

            “It’s a move in the right direction,” Cain said. “We’ll just have to get more information and move forward.”

            “I don’t think it’s a completely fair deal,” said Commissioner Rollin Hudson. “Seems like they’re dumping off something that might be a potential problem.”

            “It’s kind of a stumble in the right direction,” Hudson added.

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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting June 13, 2022; Posted June 13, 2022