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Doral Businesses Deal With Flood Waters

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Rain, rain and more rain made for a dreary start to Thursday.

While the last three days of rain has been an inconvenience for most people, for some in Doral and Sweetwater it's really taken its toll.

National Ceramics of Florida, at 7800 NW 34th Street in Doral, is a soggy mess. The rain has left its expensive gallery underwater; wooden cabinets, wood floors and displays ruined.

"This is devastating for us," said Blas Garcia, "The amount of damage we have in here is in the thousands of dollars."

The damage done by the standing water isn't covered by insurance.

"This will be coming out of pocket," said Garcia who estimated repairs would run $40,000 for the 36-year old family owned business.

"In the economy the way it is now, it's horrible," said Garcia.

Now property owners in that area will have two heavy tabs to cover. The City of Doral says those side streets in the tile district are private property and sewer maintenance there falls on the backs of property owners.

"Obviously this is s a perfect example, if you own a private road, even if you own a house any connection between your house and either the county sewer system or the municipality storm system you are responsible for maintaining that connection," said Natalie French, Spokesperson for the City of Doral.

Heavy rain pounded the city's 'tile district', which runs from 79th Avenue to the Palmetto Expressway between 32nd and 37th Streets, on Tuesday. It only had a slight chance to dry out before it was pounded by rain again Thursday morning. Business owners turned to the city and county to help them out.

"I'm hoping that they do something about the water system," said Juan Delgado with Florida Tile.

Since the area is privately owned, however, it is up the business owners to maintain their water and sewer systems.

Business owner Eric Schigiel said much of the area around his business is still underwater.

"All of our employees had their cars flooded and damaged," said Schigiel, "It's sad that just normal working people have their cars get ruined."

Schigiel owns Opus Stone on Northwest 77th Court and he said he's he lost as much as $60,000 in business due to the flooding.

Water managers started draining the C-4 Canal during heavy rainfall last week. Prior to Tuesday's rain, the canal was at 3.7 feet above sea level which is the lowest they go. But in a six hour period on Tuesday, the water climbed to 5.2 feet above sea level, just slightly less than the 6 foot level when water starts overflowing from canals.

Crews opened a 900-acre impoundment area just east of Krome Avenue and 8th Street around 1:00 a.m. Wednesday. The C-4 Impound Area can hold a billion gallons of water in an emergency. Over a 12 hour period they moved roughly 200 million gallons of water into the Impound Area to bring the C-4 Canal down.

"Its been doing what its supposed to do its functioning great in the last 24 hours," said Armando Vilaboi, of the South Florida Water Management District. "We've had a little over 200 million gallons of water inside the retention area right now."

This is only the 5th time they've used the Impound Area since it was built in 2005.

SFWMD officials said the system performed perfectly but Doral may have taken longer to drain because the water must travel through city and county secondary canals. They said there may have been debris blocking drainage systems or the rain simply fell too hard too fast.

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