By Leif Helland
The Dunedin Water Treatment Plant administrative offices are currently up for a bid of $250,000 for a project to install impact resistant windows for future natural disaster events. This type of infrastructure project came from the recent string of hurricanes named Milton, Helene and Debby on the Gulf Coast in late 2024.
The impact from these hurricanes was estimated to be $2.43 billion in damage as of January 2025. Although the water treatment facility did not sustain much damage, Dunedin city engineer managing the project, Alejandro Gonzalez, prefers to proceed with caution.
“Thankfully, there was no damage besides electrical loss of power, but the water plant has an on- site diesel backup generator,” Gonzalez said. “But we also got kind of lucky that the hurricanes either went south of us or they flew up by us. So, we want to be prepared in the future.”
Along with the plan of reinforcing the city’s water treatment’s windows and doors, Gonzalez reassured the importance of other completed projects such as the one at the wastewater plant.
“That building [wastewater plant administrative offices] also houses our main electrical equipment,” Gonzalez said. “So obviously we want to keep that facility as resilient as possible. We’re also going through a lot of these cities’ lift stations, and we’re raising our control panels out of the flood zones so that when the flood does occur, our electrical systems don’t getfried out because of water intrusion.”
Scott and Laura Wilson are a married couple originally from New York that moved to Dunedin just a couple months before the hurricanes struck along the Gulf Coast. The Wilson’s were fortunate to not have withstand any damage, but to be safethey evacuated to Atlanta, Georgia, for Helene.
They stayed for hurricane Milton, and yet again, they were fortunate to not have sustained any damage besides a couple of days without power. They said they sympathize with their neighbors who weren’t as lucky.
“It was awful seeing the damage and people’s belongings on the streets washed away,” Laura Wilson said.
Based upon their experience in 2012 with hurricane sandy devastating New York, they felt that Florida was best prepared for these events.
“How fast of a turnaround time compared to hurricane Sandy,” Laura Wilson said. “Roads were cleared and cleaned upwithin weeks. Sandy took years to recover.”
Scott Wilson, although grateful for the limited damage and the infrastructure project at the water facility said “it probably had to be done” for the facility’s upgrade. Scott Wilson wasn’t too pleased with the recovery time for the Dunedin Marina, going as far as to say they were “dragging their feet with the marina and dock.”
Although Dunedin did not receive much damage from the string of hurricanes in 2024, its more popular attraction, the Dunedin Marina, is still closed due to
damage.
The Dunedin Marina reported major damage, including destroyed piers and day docks, collapsed north and east seawalls, a fallen parking lot, a submerged electrical system and a damaged main dock that was closed to the public, according to the city’s website.
Currently the project to fix and reinforce the docks at the Dunedin Marina is estimated to cost over $10 million, with further updated project development set to cost an additional $8 million. With further additions to the docks, it is looking to be fully done by 2027 totaling over $18 million, according to city of Dunedin website.
