Orange County Commissioners to approve contract for Orlo Vista flooding mitigation project

Orange County leaders are expected to finally hire a company for the long-delayed project to protect the Orlo Vista neighborhood from devastating floods like it saw during hurricanes Irma and Ian.

The contract for a company to do the work has been approved. And people in Orlo Vista should see the work start up early next year but not finished until 2024.

The flooding seen in Orlo Vista after Hurricane Ian is making this project even more important. But the county has been trying to get this done since Hurricane Irma five years ago.

The major part of the plan is making three retention ponds in the neighborhood deeper. Right now, they’re about four feet deep. This would add 10 more feet so they can handle more water in a major storm. The original plan would have cost about $10 million, and early this year, the county got the money it needed to pay for most of it from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But then the companies that could do the work said it would cost more than double, at over $20 million.