Water issues could delay or cancel building developments

City Manager Marty Lawing was told by officials that the city’s ability to provide water to development projects can’t be promised.

WINK News has a copy of an email from the Fort Myers city manager detailing concerns about the city’s ability to provide water to new development projects. This could cause new projects and developments in the city of Fort Myers to soon be halted or even canceled.

Darla Bonk the Fort Myers city councilmember of the 6 Ward says “I don’t think enough people paid attention in years past, and I think we avoided it and put it to the side”.

City Manager Marty Lawing told the mayor and city council members that the departments of environmental protection and health invited him and three others to a meeting on April 29. They were told that the D.E.P. and D.O.H. were concerned about the city’s ability to provide water to development projects that have either been given the green light to go or are still waiting at the stoplight.

Consequently, the two entities asked the city to instruct all new development projects to apply for water permits under a different permit called a “specific permit.” That means go ahead and build more but we can’t promise you that you’ll have water when you’re done.

“Developers are coming here whether people like it or not,” Bonk says, “this is going to make them perhaps hit a pause button and say do I want to come and bring a project to Fort Myers?”

Lawing explained, “we’re not as worried as you might think we would be.”

“We’re confident in that and we’re not stopping at that. So we’ll be drilling additional wells going into next calendar year. Probably within the next month, we’ll also have a contract to present to the City Council to approve the engineering design for a water treatment plant expansion,” Lawing says.

Is the city outgrowing itself at a pace we can’t keep up with?

“The growth probably caught up with the city quicker than the city planned for it too, to be honest with you,” Lawing answered. “We’ve had good growth, quality growth, and that creates a demand on the water system. So we’re playing catch up right now as part of the growing pains of the city.”

Lawing maintains a positive outlook while acknowledging this is, in his words, “not an ideal situation”. As a consequence, we could have delays and even cancellations on development projects.