PORT ORANGE, Fla. – The battle to fix flooding issues in Volusia County is still going on more than a year and a half after Hurricane Ian left neighborhoods devastated. This week, the Florida Department of Transportation started a major project to clean up and drain the Nova Canal that runs through three cities.
Crews are starting the work this week at the northern part of the canal in Holly Hill, then will make their way down the 7.5-mile stretch through Daytona Beach and into Port Orange.
“We had 1,000 homes flood during Ian and there’s systems and subsystems. But when one of them this big fails to function because it’s just simply overwhelmed not just by our water but taking on water from neighboring cities in other areas, it becomes very impacted,” said Port Orange Mayor Don Burnette.
Burnette said the project is well overdue.
“It serves the whole region. The major outfalls on each end, one of them is here in Port Orange in Rose Bay,” he said.
The $875,000 project is cleaning vegetation and litter out and reshaping the canal.
The canal backed up and overflowed in 2022 during Ian, causing more flooding through the cities.
Residents in Sugar Forest, one of the Port Orange neighborhoods that is still rebuilding and cleaning up from the storm, told News 6 they have lived with fear of that situation happening again.
“Definitely. I mean it was waist deep here,” said Austyn Coleman.
Burnette said this will hopefully help prevent the issues and hopes most of the work will be done ahead of this storm season.
“This Is something that’s been needed for a long time. It’s only getting worse so really it needed to be done like yesterday,” he said.
FDOT crews expect to be completely done by the end of the year.
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