Lee County is weighing a $713,000 state funding request to dredge a sandbar left in the Orange River by Hurricane Irma and realign an upstream ditch, work the county says would ease chronic flooding across an 80 square mile drainage area covering Lehigh Acres and Buckingham

Lee County commissioners are weighing a $713,000 state funding request aimed at chronic flooding along the Orange River, according to Gulf Coast News.

The outlet reports that the county's draft legislative agenda splits the request into $500,000 for dredging and $213,000 for realigning an upstream ditch near the Florida Power and Light discharge canal. The dredging would remove a sandbar that formed in the Orange River after Hurricane Irma.

The county describes the Orange River as a major drainage system serving approximately 80 square miles, including Lehigh Acres and Buckingham. Officials said the improvements would help address chronic flooding risks, particularly during heavy rain or storms, and would reduce emergency response costs over time.

Buckingham flooded badly in Irma in 2017, with homes submerged and roads impassable. Lisa Brantly, who rode out the storm there, told Gulf Coast News that "the water started to rise, and it rose quite fast," and that her household sat on a bed for the entire night while everything floated around them.

The request is still preliminary. Commissioners were scheduled to review their legislative policy at a workshop on Wednesday afternoon at 1.30 p.m.

Two limits are worth being plain about. A state funding request is an ask made to the Legislature, not money in hand, and nothing announced so far says this project is funded or scheduled. And no public document sits behind this account here: the draft legislative agenda is a county board document on a county website this desk cannot reach, so the figures, the drainage area and the workshop time are the outlet's account of the county's draft rather than a reading of the paper itself.