Goodland Drive Rehabilitation Project to Provide Relief From Flooding

The winding road to Goodland that folk history tells us Goodland pioneer Harry Pettit built singlehandedly during World War II is finally being raised in a huge construction project that involves elevating much of the half mile long road two feet. District One Collier County Commissioner, Rick LoCastro, said the project is running ahead of schedule.

“We’re definitely running ahead of schedule,” LoCastro told the Coastal Breeze News during an onsite interview Wednesday, September 22. "The delivery date is mid-December. Everybody was freaking out because they wanted it done before season. But the thing is, this road project needs to be done correctly. We can’t do everything in the off-season. Luckily, we started this in off-season. We’ve been saying mid-December is the worst-case scenario. All the reports that I’ve been getting say that we’re well ahead of schedule. There’s some days that they start at 3:00 AM because there’s other things going on out here. It’s not just paving. You have some significant engineering and environmental things going on with the culverts. And even some other areas where there are drainage improvements. So, some of those teams we’ve been able to get in and out very quickly by having them work around the clock. You don’t want to promise something, but at every meeting our going-in position is aggressive, quality work, as quick as humanly possible. But it’s a big job. Even if it takes a little longer to get everything right, I don’t want this contractor speeding and being proud of an early delivery of a project that doesn’t stand the test of time. But as I continue to get updates, it’s ‘Commissioner, we’re ahead of schedule.’ We were supposed to do some things in mid-September, and we ended up doing them in August. When I hear those kinds of things, it’s encouraging. I know we’re paddling in the right direction.”

On Thursday Jay Ahmad, Director of Transportation Engineering, and John Conti, Project Manager for the Transportation Engineering and Construction Management section, took the Coastal Breeze News on a behind-the-scenes tour of the roughly $3 million road project.

"Goodland Drive used to flood in a regular high tide,” Ahmad said. "At times you come here there is water. During major storms you have major floods. You can see the bay right there. The roadway was shallow. Parts of the roadway were at that level or lower. We’re elevating the road from that elevation to about four feet above sea level. Some areas have gotten over 24-inches of asphalt, in layers of two or four inches. They’ve been paving for a while. They’ve lifted that roadway above that known flood elevation by science that we determined. We don’t want to destroy the mangroves. We want to elevate the roadway at one elevation that essentially takes the flooding away but does not destroy the environment or the mangroves. So, there is a balance. Essentially the road will be what it used to be, one lane in each direction, eleven-feet lanes. There used to be a small pedestrian pathway/bicycle lane, now we’re making an eight-foot pathway. There is an area of pavement marking, striping, between the roadway and the pathway. That pathway starts at 92A (San Marco Road) to Angler Drive."

The new bike pedestrian/bicycle path will be a dramatic improvement over the bumpy path that was there before. There will be a wide, white rumble strip separating the path from the roadway.

"There’s going to be a two-foot double white line,” Conti said, "then they’re going to have the chevrons, they’re like raised areas, on these white lines. There used to be a two-foot grass buffer that was hard to maintain so we just paved that. The roadway was in need of major repair, in addition to the flooding.”

A middle-aged woman spotted LoCastro on the side of Goodland Drive and stopped her car and rolled down her window.

“We need a wider bike path,” the woman informed LoCastro.

“We’re going to go as wide as we can,” LoCastro assures her.

True to their reputation, Goodland residents have not been shy about letting LoCastro and the county workers know how they’re feeling about the project.

“I know the residents who live down here know the area better than me,” LoCastro said. "Better than Donna Fiala.”

Fiala is the recently retired 20-year county commissioner who preceded LoCastro. Fiala worked hard on the front end of the project.

"They’ve lived here,” LoCastro said. "They live, eat and drink Goodland. They’ve very protective of this fishing village. I get comments from them like, ‘Wow, the road crew’s doing great. They were out here all night.' They’ve seen plenty of projects go bad. They’re really my yardstick. People like Mike Barbush have been such a valuable resource to me. When Mike Barbush, Greg Bello, who is the president of the Goodland Civic Association, and multiple, unrelated people, give me the same positive feedback, then I know we’re cooking with gas. I know good things are happening.”

Ahmad and Conti have enjoyed interacting with Goodland residents.

"The folks in Goodland who pass by us on the road are extremely happy that even at the current elevation there is so much improvement,” Ahmad said. "They definitely will let you know what they think. The feedback has been extremely positive. It’s not unanimous - it never is. But I would say it’s been overwhelmingly very positive. These folks have been lobbying for the project for years. I’ve been with the county for 16 years.”

Ahmad said a Goodland resident warned him to protect a marker honoring Pettit’s accomplishment of building Goodland Drive.

"There’s a monument where you first enter,” Ahmad said. "There was a gentleman when we started who said not to mess up that monument. So, we put up some protective fencing."

"I’ve heard the Goodland residents have been coming by giving the guys cold bottles of water,” LoCastro said. "That’s what Goodland is. People here are just friendly." 

LoCastro is determined to make sure that the Goodland road project is a success. He wants a project that is done right, on time and on budget. If it gets done early, that’s just icing on the cake. He views this project as high profile.

“It absolutely is a high-profile project,” LoCastro said. "Our expectation is that this will be one of the projects we’re proud of. One of the reasons I come out here regularly is because I want to see activity like I’m seeing right now,” he said, motioning to workers who are hard at work on this typically sunny summer morning. "I want to see that it’s a quality project. That we’re not dragging our feet. This project is promised to us in December of this year. But our contractor is working hard to deliver it to us early. I want to make sure that it happens. It’s an important road. It provides entry and egress for the residents of Goodland and also visitors that come here. It’s the only point of entry and egress, so it’s a very important road. Having it drag along and pour into season, and have cars backed up all the way down San Marco is not what we want. This project didn’t drag, and that’s what I’m proud of. Thomas Marine is our contractor. We shook a lot of trees to make sure we didn’t hire a contractor that had problems or had a bad track record. This is where I put on my Air Force Commander hat. I’m learning new things every day at the county, but as a military base commander you do a lot of these projects. You deal with contractors. I’d be standing in front of a four-star general’s desk getting chewed out if the project was a month late or if it was $100,000 over budget. In District One, our new mantra is, 'on time, on budget, or better.’”

Ahmad and Conti are on top of the details of the project. They are confident that the project will take care of the road flooding that has plagued Goodland residents for years. They said the key to the success of the project is two culverts that have been designed and installed.

"A major part of the project was how to hydrate the mangroves and elevate the road by about two feet,” Ahmad said. "This is kind of the heart of the project, these two crossings that weren’t here. The 42-inch pipes, five of them in each culvert, provide the water flow from one side of the road to the other that wasn’t there. The hope is now that the water from high tide, from the bay, is not flooding our roadway. The hope is, science and all that is, there are people on both sides. Sea level rise, global warming, whatever you want to call it. Is that the reason the roadway is flooding? It’s always been flooding. That could be one of the reasons. If the sea continues to rise it will take well beyond our lifetime for that to happen. Who knows, there may be a need 100 years from now to elevate the road some more."

"There wasn’t any piping here before,” Ahmad said. "This is all new stuff. The Goodland people have commented about the beautiful views they have now where the culverts have been installed. We say it was always here, you just couldn’t see it. They always wondered why it was flooding. It was because the bay was coming in here.”

"When the tide rises,” Conti said, "it came up over the road and into the mangroves. They didn’t understand that."

With the culverts installed, the tide will flow through the culverts at high tide and into the adjacent mangrove forest. Then it will exit back out through the culverts as the tide goes out. The pipes in the culvert are caged. 

"These are manatee gates,” Conti explains. “They keep manatees from coming in here and getting stuck when the tide goes out.”  

Ahmad and Conti said the entire road isn’t receiving two feet of asphalt.

“It varies,” Conti said. "There were some low spots. In some areas we put it up two feet above the base asphalt. In other places it wasn’t that far off, so it was just a little bit of the base asphalt and then another four and a half inches of structural.”

"There is still a layer of about four-inches of asphalt that will come after this,” Ahmad said. "We still haven’t reached the elevation we want to reach. They’re still doing some drainage. We want to do the draining before we do the final asphalt. This is what we call the structural. It’s lifting the roadway above the flood elevation, probably about two-feet above where it was.”

An area of concern for many is the area right before Goodland Drive reaches Stan’s Idle Hour. That’s all part of the project.

"By design we created some swales to take some of that water by Stan’s,” Ahmad said. "We will collect and treat it. We couldn’t elevate that roadway higher than it is because of the structure that’s around it. We’re elevating it some.”

"In addition, we’re redoing the drainage in there,” Conti said. "There was a structure that had a pipe going directly to the bay. When the tide would come in, the water would rise up out of the structure and into the road. The new pipe that we’re putting in has a baffle built into it so the water will go out, but not back in."

"It should take care of most of the problems there,” Ahmad said. "The roadways in Goodland are lower than Goodland Drive. A lot lower. The idea is that Goodland has elevation lower than this roadway. That’s elevation two feet or one foot, and this is level four feet. The elevation of the roadway is the purpose of this project. We couldn’t do the same down there because of houses. I’m going to say the road was raised a couple of inches in the area by Stan's."

“Remember,” Conti said, "we have to tie into the existing road, so it has to be tapered in.”

"I’m happy and pleased with what I’ve seen,” LoCastro said. "But we’re not going to take the pressure off of the contractor. You’ve got to come out here and put eyes on things. Not only as a commissioner. I’m impressed when I come out here and see our county leadership who are out here. From roads and grounds to the people who work with this contractor. They’ve gotten their boots muddy walking around, taking a look at the culverts and different things that have been added to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth, and things are happening on time and on budget."

"I know the residents will be happy with the final product,” Ahmed said with a smile.