LAKELAND, Fla. (WFLA) — While many homes sit gutted or vacant because of insurance and funding delays, people who live on Lake Bonny are urging all leaders to work together to prevent another disaster.

Heavy rainfall from mid-summer through Hurricane Milton in October caused Lake Bonny to swell beyond its banks and flood homes that have never been flooded before.

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“We were panicked,” Diana Hoagland said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know if our house was going to flood.”

Hoagland said water encircled her home and flooded the crawlspace underneath the house.

Hoagland, who works in the insurance industry, has carried flood insurance since moving into the home 22 years ago.

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On Thursday morning, she received her first payment from her insurance company so she can begin work on her flood-damaged home.

She knows her neighbors are not as fortunate.

The Lake Bonny Drive area is not part of a flood plain so flood insurance is not required.

“We don’t want to be stigmatized as flood prone communities and watch our property values tank,” said Hoagland.

8 On Your Side has spoken with several Lake Bonny residents since Milton.

Pam Smith provided pictures of her gutted home, which flooded for weeks after the hurricane.

She said her homeowners insurance denied her appeal and a $10,000 check from FEMA will not cover the repairs and upgrades required.

She said the city of Lakeland is not providing financial relief.

Down the road, Misty Wells and her husband are also at a standstill.

“Our flood insurance company is trying to deny fixing the foundation, and we obviously can’t rebuild the inside of the house without the foundation being fixed,” said Misty Wells in January.

Control of Lake Bonny is shared between the city of Lakeland, Polk County and the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD).

“While I understand that, It’s also very easy for everybody to say ‘not me, not me’ so they have to work together,” Hoagland said.

Lakeland city manager Shawn Sherrouse said he met with the county manager and SWFWMD in early January on the need for solutions, beyond a focus on a pump that takes water out of Lake Bonny.

Residents have honed in on the pump as the main reason for the flooding in October.

“If we were only studying that pump, we are just studying one system of a much larger disease,” said Sherrouse during a Jan. 21 commission meeting.

An $82,000 study of the watershed is currently underway.

AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm, is expecting to complete the work in four to six months, which means it will be completed just before or during hurricane season.

The goal, city officials said, is to analyze possible flooding sources and provide a “detailed work plan to complete the next phase which will be a feasibility study of identified potential flood relief options.”

“What’s concerning to me is the timeline,” Hoagland said. “They said it would be six months from the beginning of the study which puts us squarely in the middle of hurricane season, in the middle of rainy season so what happens?”

A spokesperson for SWFWMD sent 8 On Your Side a statement which reads in part:

The City of Lakeland verified that the pump on Lake Bonny (which is currently permitted by the District) functioned as designed during the event, but the magnitude of the combined rainy season and multiple tropical events overwhelmed the system.

With regards to the District’s involvement moving forward, Polk County and the City agreed to co-fund an engineering study to identify any viable solutions to mitigate or minimize flooding risks around Lake Bonny. Once that is completed, the stakeholder governments will evaluate and potentially revisit the operations guidelines in the current District permit, but that will be determined by the outcome of the study.

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