The Municipal Service District (MSD) of Ponte Vedra Beach held its monthly meeting on Monday, April 13, at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church.
A large chunk of this month’s meeting was spent discussing a serious issue on Morning Side Drive. A resident who lives on Morning Side spoke about an old storm drain that collapsed in his backyard and created a pit measuring 8 by 4 feet and 3 feet deep.
The pit has become a magnet for snakes and mosquitoes, and the resident has been dealing with this issue for four years.
“Your situation is really unfortunate and really unique. You have an abandoned drain line that is corroding and collapsing, but it doesn’t have clear ownership,” said Trustee Mickey White.
White said that the drain line has been abandoned for a long time and that there wasn’t much the MSD board could do about it.
“The MSD has never owned or had any maintenance responsibilities over that easement. We can advocate for the county to get in there and fix it, but that’s as far as we can go,” he said.
White said the best thing to do would be to fill the pit so that there would be no further collapse; however, it sits on a joint property line.
There are some questions about whether the county still holds an easement over the property and now it seems like the issue may be getting worse.
The resident said that, from what he has been told, there are three of these pits running behind Morning Side.
District 4 Commissioner Krista Joseph has been out to see the collapse, and the resident has emails from Joseph stating that it needed to be taken care of.
MSD Chairman Kitty Switkes stated that she would reach back out to Joseph to follow up as this is a huge safety issue.
