Cost for fixing Orlo Vista flooding soars, delays project

A project to prevent future flooding in Orlo Vista was supposed to begin this month but it’s been sidetracked by rising costs.

Since 2017, when Hurricane Irma’s rains swamped the working-class neighborhood south of Pine Hills, Orlo Vista residents have awaited a fix for storm flooding which has wrecked their homes twice in the past five years, most recently after Hurricane Ian last month.

The year after Irma, a county consultant estimated that a proposed drainage-improvement plan would cost about $10 million. In January, FEMA gave the county $7.5 million for the project through its Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. A state grant was expected to cover the balance of $2.5 million.

The project was placed on a high-priority schedule with a targeted completion date of February 2024, Public Works spokesperson Darrell Moody said, but when construction bids were opened in August, the lowest was $21.5 million, double what the county had budgeted. The consultant’s original price projection, estimated four years ago, “did not reflect the highly variable and significant material, labor, and fuel cost increases that have been evident the last six months,” Moody said in an email last week to the Orlando Sentinel.

A new estimate, which Moody described as “more representative of current costs,” put the price tag at about $19.5 million.