County asks landowner to make changes, pay fee after NBC6 investigation into Rock Pit Lake project

Chunks of concrete are piling up and headed for eternal submersion into what was once the jewel of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood: Rock Pit Lake.

Vera Armbrister and her husband have lived there for 50 years.

“I really don’t know what’s going on,” Armbrister said. “And we have never seen anything like this… over here, I just cleaned the dust off of it because there’s so much dust coming from this.”

She's referring to how, on dry days, the dust from the concrete being dumped 400 feet away makes its way to her property. On the wet ones, water rises on Northwest 17^th Court.

“It’s not draining, and thank God no children are walking to school, because when it’s so bad the children that walk to school, they can’t walk to school,” Armbrister said.

In applying for permission to fill in Rock Pit Lake, the landowner said a nearby drain would funnel any water into the lake, but after the NBC6 Investigators found discrepancies in the plans, the city came out, looked into it and found it was not draining.

And it certainly was not functioning when NBC6 visited the neighborhood on Wednesday. 

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The city and county also confirmed an adjacent FPL service center lot was not contributing to the water there, just as the application to Broward County stated.

But the NBC6 Investigators found that the application did omit a 16-acre area along Northwest 16^th Street that was in fact draining into the lake.

Now the county is demanding in a letter that the landowner pay more than $10,000 to modify plans to include that water.

The landowner, Jordan Zahlene, told NBC6 that in addition to unblocking the drain on 17^th Court, they “want to do what’s right for the environment and the neighborhood.”

His engineer has concluded the additional water would still not cause flooding during major storms, but the county wants more information before approving.

Meanwhile, the filling of Rock Pit Lake goes on.

It could take 100,000 dump truck loads, clean concrete, fill and construction debris to fill the 28-acre lake that is in some spots 60 feet deep.

Meanwhile, the drain on the street remains blocked from draining.

“Anybody that’s going around the corner it’s so much water that it’s a mess,” Armbrister said.