OKEECHOBEE — Following the recent storms and the flooding in some areas, Libby Pigman, from South Florida Water Management District, spoke to the Okeechobee City Council regarding a Flood Observation Tool. She explained that the tool is on the SFWMD website and can be used by anyone, including members of the public.

“If you're driving around and you see an area where there's flooding, you can document it. And it's tied to your cell,” she said.

You do not have to download an app. You just take a picture, and if you have location services turned on it will save the GIS coordinates where the photo was taken. You will be asked some questions like: How deep was the water? Have you seen this before? Does it happen every time it rains?

“And the purpose of that is not to send someone out to the area to fix it,” she explained. “The purpose of it is to document it so that if this is a place that does this every single time it rains, which we know we have some of that in the city.”

She said there are some low areas that don’t have a lot of infrastructure, and when grant monies become available for resiliency projects, they will have a record to help when presenting grant applications.

“This is a way to create a database to save those observations.”

She said she was at the council meeting to let them know the district is here for them.

“We’re on top of it. And, you know, we're in a very unusual weather pattern right now where we've got a super El Nino. Our executive director called it a super duper El Nino. And it's projected to give us a lot more rain in the dry season than what we're expecting. And also to have these really strong, isolated rain events in one particular area. And that's exactly what happened in Okeechobee over the weekend.”

To access the Flood Observation Tool on the website, visit SFWMD Flood Observation Tool and scroll down to find the QR code.