Hollywood's seawall passes king tide test, but seawater can still rise through storm drains

For the first time, all 20 openings in a new seawall along North and South Lake Drives were covered Wednesday, successfully blocking Intracoastal Waterway floodwaters during annual king tides.

High tide on Monday sent water pouring through gaps in the seawall onto North Lake Drive. By Wednesday, with all panels installed, ocean water was no longer spilling onto the land.

Local residents noted that street flooding during king tides typically makes travel nearly impossible.

"I mean, you can't drive down this road," resident Luke Furr said. "I have a jet ski. I could probably use the jet ski. It's got to be at least a foot and a half."

Hollywood Chief Resiliency Officer Chris Roschek explained that the seawall and its removable panels are engineered to keep tidal waters out while allowing heavy rainwater to drain off city streets.

"The way that this works is that when the water builds up on this side, it would be held back by the gate," Roschek said. "And if we have a lot of rainwater built up on this side, we can open up the panels and let the water flow out to the lake."

While the barrier stops surface water, ocean water can still push up through storm drains to flood roadways. To address this issue, the city is installing new one-way flow valves—known as Wapro valves—that allow stormwater to drain into the Intracoastal while preventing seawater from flowing backward.

"The Wapro valves right now are going to help," Hollywood spokeswoman Joanne Hussey said. "Some of them that are really low in the wall are going to be raised up, so they won't be backing water up into the neighborhood."

A central component of Hollywood's long-term tidal flood protection plan relies on new, larger pump stations, which officials estimate are at least five years away. Once operational, the upgraded stations will move 300 cubic feet of water per second—the equivalent of 18,000 water bottles every second and six times the city's current pumping capacity.

"It will be like a self-contained closed vacuum system, for lack of a better word," Hussey said. "Stormwater will go into the system; it will be sucked up through the pump and then spread out into the Intracoastal, thereby keeping the neighborhoods dry."