Miami Seaside is constructing roads for the ocean to rise. Lawsuits say they’re additionally inflicting flooding

The constant complaints that Miami Beach’s plans to elevate streets in the face of rising seas would flood nearby homes has ultimately led to lawsuits.

A group of landowners sued the city for raising the street in front of their homes and pouring flooding into their property, rendering it unusable as a short-term rental.

For Miami Beach, this is the newest challenge in dealing with rising sea levels – and an example of the legal hurdles cities across the state (and nation) can face in planning their future.

“Miami Beach is at the forefront of resilience efforts to reduce the risk of flooding from storms, floods and sea level rise. We strongly believe that the city’s resilience program benefits all real estate, including this one. The complaint was not served to the city, but as soon as this is the case, we will act accordingly, ”said city spokeswoman Melissa Berthier in a statement.

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When Miami Beach raised 14th Street, it was a foot or two taller than some of the surrounding lots. Some of these landowners have sued the city, claiming the road improvements are causing flooding.

In the lawsuit, the owners argue that they were never legally required to manage the rainwater that ran on their property. They said they could dump it in the street since the houses were built in 1929 and 1938.

That changed when the city raised nearby streets more than a foot above the adjacent properties. Miami Beach is facing a sea-level rise of more than two feet by 2060, which could flood thousands of homes and cause billions in property damage.

Several panels of experts have identified the road elevation as an integral part of the city’s plans to protect itself from climate change and ensure that the city remains a liveable and investment-worthy place, but almost all of them have told the city to better communicate with residents about it.

Miami Beach raised 14th Street by about two inches in 2014 while the state raised Alton Road, and the upgraded flood pumping station was one of several built as part of “emergencies” with no bidding contracts. None of the flood pumping stations built at the time had generators because local residents feared the diesel belching machines would be loud and unsightly. Since then, generators have become more common in pump projects.

In 2017, the Emily Tropical Depression blew through south Florida, flooding the area with about five inches of rain. Roads were impassable, cars were flooded and the power went out – with the brand new rain pumps. A city spokesman said it rained twice as much as the pumps.

In the lawsuit, the property owners described how “several inches of water entered the existing structures on the property and took several days to go back.”

In 2018, one of the companies in the lawsuit sued its insurance company for failing to cover the flood damage caused by the Emily Tropical Depression, and the two sides settled out of court in 2019. The lawsuit describes several more floods in June 2020 and February 2021 when the rainwater system “failed” and the flood damaged the buildings, including their foundations.

“Ultimately, the ongoing flooding will damage the foundations of the properties to such an extent that the existing structures on the properties collapse or become permanently uninhabitable,” the lawsuit said. “Even between flood events, the unpredictability of the next flood event makes the property practically useless and worthless.”

The lawsuit represents two companies that own short-term rental properties on West Ave – Varcamp Properties and JV Holdings 1400. Both companies are owned by Luis Varela, Angelica Varela, Karen Campbell and Bryan Campbell, according to Sunbiz records.

A phone number listed on the Varcamp website has been disconnected and emails have been returned to the addresses listed.

The attorney representing the case, Tom Robertson, is a partner in Bercow Radell Fernandez Larkin and Tapanes law firm in Miami. He was previously the assistant district attorney for Miami Dade. He did not respond to several requests for comments.

Varcamp Properties and JV Holdings 1400 want the city to compensate them for damage and business loss and allow them to renovate the properties while maintaining their grandfather status as short-term tenants in a neighborhood where the practice is prohibited.

This is the second lawsuit of its kind against the city for its road increases. The first from the Mirador Association was fired.

Quarrel from the start

Lawsuits about Miami Beach’s road construction plans threatened from the start.

Dissatisfied local residents who wanted to avoid the disruption, costs and potential flooding associated with higher roads warned commissioners in several public meetings that they would sue if the projects moved forward. In some cases the pushback worked and the projects were delayed.

The prosecutor had previously said that he did not consider such lawsuits to be legal.

Erin Deady, an attorney who represents several local governments on climate adaptation issues, said there have long been legal theories about whether or not a government can flood property, but they have not yet been applied to climate-related infrastructures.

“Complaints about infrastructure and resilience and adapting responses are no different from historical flood incidents that we have had for a long, long time. It just adds a whole new dimension where we don’t have a lot of clear case laws, ”she said.

Deady advises her clients, some of whom are closely watching the Miami Beach street battles, consider how the design of their projects will affect the surrounding properties.

“This is an evolving thing so we are all learning from one another. What works for one local government may work for them, but may not work for another local government, ”she said.

Miami Beach’s street height plans also tested the limits of regulatory and insurance agencies, even though the city came out on top in both cases.

After a heavy rainstorm caused flood damage, a restaurateur in Sunset Harbor, one of the first neighborhoods to see a dramatic increase in the street, was initially denied coverage by his flood insurance company after it had his restaurant on the first floor compared to the newly constructed street. It took 14 months and lobbying the city, but his request was eventually approved.

After the city raised roads in its first residential area, the Tony Palm and Hibiscus Islands, the city’s inspector general found advisors warned that raising roads would flood homes, which is what the city’s mandate to build roads with collided at low altitude. The city’s solution to installing drains into the public rainwater system on private properties got them into trouble with regulators after the city failed to obtain the appropriate permits.

Miami Beach

Before-and-after pictures show that the new elevated streets in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbor neighborhood remain dry even with higher tides.

Road increase continues

Plans to raise the intersection near the homes named in the lawsuit, West Avenue, are still underway. Construction could start before the end of the year.

Valerie Navarrete, a realtor and former president of the West Ave Neighborhood Association, said she was still looking forward to the project. Her neighborhood is severely flooded and she has already spent a lot of money trying to adapt.

Your Lincoln Road condo has underground parking, so rain and tidal waves pour in from the street. The combination of expensive rainwater pumps and an automatic portable dam that prevents water from flowing down the ramp and into the garage seems to have solved the problem for the time being. However, she fears that if the city does not install proper drainage around their property as the roads are raised, their pumps and the dam could be inundated with even more flooding.

When the city first built a few streets in its neighborhood five years ago, Navarrete remembers going door to door, leaving a flyer with her cell phone number on every affected house and business. She said she got a lot of complaints but also heard from a lot of people who couldn’t stand the floods and needed a solution.

“I know people don’t like the road elevation. I don’t like it either, but it’s like medicine. It tastes bad, but you have to take it if you want to get better, ”she said. “If we do nothing, we are Venice.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded to cover the effects of climate change on the state.

Emily Michot / Miami Herald

Miami Beach engineer Bruce Mowry stands on 20th Street between Purdy Avenue and Bay Road, next to an elevated sidewalk. The city is working to raise the road and sidewalks to protect them from sea level rise.