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Sarasota. The facility is known as Lift Station Number 87, LS 87 for short. On Monday all the bad news was behind them. The Sarasota City Commission on April 25 gave its permission to the team to look at new options for the project, and on May 5, it agreed to wipe the slate clean and go with a fresh start. The May 12 meeting with engineers and archi- tects from the city and McKim & Creed began to fill in a new slate, focusing on a return to an aboveground design that could be as tall as 34 feet. This time the city is not blindly trusting another engineering design company. Every step is being peer-reviewed by a global engi- neering company simply called Atkins. HOW MUCH HURRICANE PROTECTION? The failed plan had another flaw. It was designed to comply with a Florida Department of Environmental Protection requirement to withstand a 100-year flood event. After Garland decided to see what that meant for hurricane protection, he found one crit- ical facility in the original plan would not withstand the expected storm surge from a Category 2 hurricane. Because the station would consist of under- ground "silos," enough surge on their "lids" could collapse the roofs and fill the facility with water. "When some of these structures collapse, the motor control structure is lost, and it can take six months to replace," said Garland. A sign for the original Lift Station 87 project still stood outside Luke Wood Park in November 2012. Photo by Norman Schimmel Sarasota News Leader May 16, 2014 Page 52