County tells landowners to make changes, pay fees after NBC6 investigates Rock Pit Lake project – NBC 6 South Florida

Chunks of concrete are piling up and will forever sink into what was once the jewel of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood: Rock Pit Lake.

Vera Armbrister and her husband have lived there for 50 years.

“I really don’t know what’s going on,” Armbrister said. “And we’ve never seen anything like this before… I was just dusting it off over here because there’s so much dust coming up.”

What she means is that on dry days, dust from the concrete dumped 400 feet away finds its way to her property. On wet days, the water rises on Northwest 17^th Court.

“It’s not exhaustive and thank God no child has to walk to school. Because if it’s that bad, the children who walk to school won’t be able to walk to school at all,” Armbrister said.

When applying for a permit to fill Rock Pit Lake, the landowner had said a nearby drain would direct all of the water into the lake. But after NBC6 investigators found inconsistencies in the plans, the city came to look at the problem and found that the drain wasn’t working.

And it certainly didn’t work when NBC6 visited the neighborhood on Wednesday.

The city and county also confirmed that an adjacent property of an FPL service center did not contribute to the water supply there, just as stated in the application to Broward County.

But NBC6 investigators found that the application left out a 16-acre area along Northwest 16^th Road that actually drained into the lake.

Now, in a letter, the county is demanding that the landowner pay more than $10,000 to change the plans to include this body of water.

The landowner, Jordan Zahlene, told NBC6 that in addition to clearing the drain blockages on April 17,^th According to the court, they want to “do the right thing for the environment and the neighborhood.”

His engineer concluded the additional water still wouldn’t cause flooding during severe storms, but the county wants more information before approving.

In the meantime, Rock Pit Lake continues to be filled.

Filling the 28-acre lake, which is 60 feet deep in some places, would require 100,000 dump truck loads of clean concrete, fill material and construction debris.

In the meantime, the drain on the street remains clogged.

“Everyone who goes around the corner gets so much water that it’s a mess,” Armbrister said.