Port St. Lucie Man Tells The I-Team: My Backyard is Water World

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) — A Port St Lucie man contacted the CBS12 News I-Team, angry about what’s happening in his backyard.

He says all the new houses being built around the neighborhood are turning his slice of paradise into water world.

And he wants the city to do something about it before the rains come back.

“There are so many developers in the city,” said Rudy Mosher, “The city doesn’t care about us. My backyard floods because there’s no place for the water to go.”

When the I-Team visited Rudy’s home on southwest Ithaca Street, it was a beautiful afternoon. Everything was dry.

Rudy, who retired from General Motors, takes a lot of pride in his lawn and garden; lots of flowers, a thriving banana tree.

But the photos Rudy sent the I-Team during the height of the rainy season tell a different story. A soggy, sinkhole-riddled moonscape. Rudy has spent thousands of dollars and many hours trying to fix the problem.

Rudy has put in a pump and has installed underground PVC pipes to try to take the water out to the street, since he can’t get any help from the city.

When the Moshers moved here 12 years ago, it was just woods behind their house. Then, over time, the woods were cut down, and new neighbors came in. The last three years have seen rapid development.

The newest house was built by Maronda homes. From his backyard, Rudy can see the pipe that’s supposed to carry water in the neighbor’s backyard to the drainage ditch in front of the lot.

But instead, the water flows backwards. To Rudy.

“It wasn’t graded properly,” Mosher said.

Here’s a quick crash course in “grading” – that’s the slope of a property, which determines which way the water runs when it rains.

Getting it right is down to the homebuilders.

If they do it wrong, they can be fined – or sued or so we thought:

“I called the city and I said I want to sue that developer because of all the water that’s coming on my property. She said you can’t sue the developer. I said what do you mean I can’t sue the developer? She said you can’t, however, she said, after the new owner takes over the property, if he can’t maintain his water, then you can sue him, and I said, that doesn’t make…