East Hillsborough residents fed up with flooding

PLANT CITY, Fla. - How much wetter can it get? Culverts are full and properties are under water, especially in rural areas like eastern Hillsborough County.

Rodney Bechore lives on Cooper Road in Plant City.  The relentless rain has made his driveway impassable. It is under about 3 feet of water.

“It is frustrating,” he told FOX 13 on Tuesday. “It’s getting tiring.”

His family’s nerves are wearing thin because they can no longer drive their vehicles down the drive. Instead, they are using their ATV to get from their house to end of the driveway where their vehicles are parked.

They use a boat to get their kids to the road, where the school bus picks them up.

“Basically we get on the boat in the morning and paddle them down,” his wife Andrea told us.

Just a few doors down, their neighbor’s pasture is so flooded you can’t see the ground anymore.

“You see the fence posts above the water in the distance,” Tonya Halvorsrod said as she pointed to them. “There’s about 6 inches of fence post above the water. That’s all.”

Some residents blame all the new construction for the poor drainage. Others say many parts of the area is low lying and will always flood.

The ground seems to be supersaturated. It is absorbing water very slowly. That’s complicated by the fact that the rain just keeps on coming, leaving few options.

“Just wait for it to drain,” said Halvorsrod. “That’s the only thing you can do.”