- April 18, 2024
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On Dec. 10, at approximately 11:50 p.m., a 19-year-old Ormond Beach man was driving southbound on Pineland Trail when he traveled off the roadway.
According to the crash report by Florida Highway Patrol, he failed to maintain control of his vehicle and collided with a tree and a metal wire fence separating the road from I-95, and overturned. He wasn't driving under the influence; the report details he was inattentive. He was transported to the hospital with non-incapacitating injuries.
A few months later, the fence remains dented where his vehicle came to a rest. The tire tracks are still visible in the ground. A lone yellow piece of caution tape remains.
For some of the residents of Pineland Trail, the crash exemplifies the present dangers of the once-rural road. Now utilized more frequently by parents driving their children to the Ormond Beach Sports Complex, school buses and people headed to nearby Ormond Crossings, Pineland Trail residents worry about the conditions of the road's shoulders.
"I have experienced where I've been off the road and it doesn't have the shoulder that it needs to," resident Donna Blankenship sad. "To me, it's very dangerous to run off the shoulder anyway and when there's nothing but potholes and ... where there's nothing to grab on to, it's just holes."
The residents of Pineland Trail also finds themselves in a unique position regarding representation at the local government level. They live in an unincorporated area of Volusia County, yet their road is maintained by the city of Ormond Beach.
Pineland Trail resident Sharon Trescott spoke before the City Commission at its March 1 meeting about the road's condition. She doesn't like to do that, she told the commissioners, but she felt she needed to because it had become a safety issue.
"I just need to put you all on notice that, in my opinion, it's gross negligence out there, and surely should be addressed or explained why it's not," she said.
"It's difficult, it really is. Sometimes they give you the time, sometimes they don't."
Stacy Wagner, resident of Pineland Trail
It wasn't the first time Trescott or her neighbors have approached the city. In addition to the road, the residents have also complained about stormwater drainage issues causing their properties to flood.
City Public Works Director Shawn Finley said the city maintains the ditches and the swales and sends employees there on a regular schedule for such work.
"Some of the things that [the residents] have brought to our attention are not things that are the responsibility of the city of Ormond Beach," Finley said.
Namely, issues with their driveways.
In August 2021, Volusia County Public Works Director Ben Bartlett met with several of the Pineland Trail residents to discuss issues involving the safety of the rights of way and stormwater runoff. Bartlett and other county employees documented the issues highlighted by the residents including a four-foot-deep void in the side of the driveway apron on a property owned by a retired Ormond Beach Public Works employee.
The county noted that the culvert was in poor condition and that the side asphalt swales are contributing to the erosion of the driveway approach. It also took photos of a wash-out along the east side of Pineland Trail that has caused a "deep rut from the shoulder to the ditch bottom," the lack of a paved apron at a driveway that resulted in the degradation of the residents' driveway and leading to deterioration of the roadway edge, and an area where backfilling was needed to correct a drop-off forming on the west side of the road.
In a letter dated Aug. 25, 2021, to the city, Bartlett wrote that he trusted the city "will evaluate the issues documented in the attachment and will expedite the necessary repairs."
These issues still exist today.
"I feel that something most definitely is not right for the way this road is and the safety factor for anyone on it," Trescott said. "And besides that, the lack of maintenance has only caused the flooding of the properties. You can see it from running down the driveways that once it gets off the road and our properties, it can't get back off or it can't get back to the ditches to drain."
Trescott has lived on Pineland Trail for over 50 years. Issues have gone on for years, she said, because it's been "very forgotten." She contacted the city about drainage issues as early as 2018, when a hole appeared at the front of her driveway. After back and forth conversations with city staff, county staff and some elected representatives, the hole was filled and a new culvert pipe was placed.
"But the water, to this day I would like to tell you, runs down my driveway from the road, onto my property as it does in many other driveways on the other properties," she said.
Pineland Trail from Tymber Creek to Airport Road was transferred to the city from the county in November 2012. It is responsible for the maintenance of the roadway, road signs, roadway striping, stormwater conveyances such as pipes, ditches and inlets and vegetative maintenance within the right of way, per an email from Bartlett.
Shortly after it was transferred to the city, the road, which used to be gravel, was paved.
In response to drainage issues damaging driveways, Finley said that the city is doing what it can to maintain the road to the best of their abilities. Addressing drainage issues would take a new master drainage system in that area, but that wouldn't eliminate some of the existing challenges.
"These are very low-lying properties that are all in the flood zone," he said. "Low-lying properties that have hydric soils that have the propensity to be wet."
In addition, he explained that the issues out there would be qualified as drainage issues rather than flooding issues, as they are localized to the property and not of regional scope.
Though there are no major projects planned for Pineland Trail, a project was submitted to the River to the Sea Transportation Planning Organization a couple years ago to fully re-do Pineland Trail.
"That's probably a long ways off, but we have some planning documents we put together for future projects, but nothing budgeted for projects this year," Finley said.
Each time it rains, Pineland Trail resident Stacy Wagner grabs her shovel. For the past two years, to prevent her property from flooding, she and her family have been digging their own channels to get the water off their yard.
Two months ago, she reached out to the county thinking that, as a resident of an unincorporated area, they would be the ones handling the issue. But the county redirected her to the city, and the city said they weren’t responsible for the water coming into the driveways from the road. She knows her property is low-lying, but said the flooding wasn’t an issue years ago.
Wagner has lived on Pineland Trail for 26 years.
“It’s difficult, it really is,” Wagner said. “Sometimes they give you the time, sometimes they don’t.”
Blakenship said she feels the city is ignoring the neighbors of Pineland Trail because they’re not city residents.
“We’re not even represented by the county for crying out loud,” she said. “We can’t get representation from neither one of them.”
But Finley maintains that Pineland Trail is in much better condition today under the city’s maintenance than when it was under the county’s.
“I think that we do those things that we can with the resources available to maintain Pineland Trail as we do any other roadway,” he said.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:47 p.m. on Monday, March 14, to correct that a Pineland Trail project was submitted to the River to the Sea Transportation Planning Organization, not the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization.
