Inside one of the biggest stormwater pump factories in Florida, 90 workers are busy molding metal: cutting, shaping, welding, painting and assembling it into the massive machines responsible for keeping South Florida’s streets dry. The pumps they’re building can stand up to 20 feet tall, weigh as much as 22 tons and include pipes so big the workers can stand up inside of them. When they’re installed in low-lying neighborhoods and alongside sluggish canals, they can stop water from flooding into homes and businesses during storms and king tides.

They’re part of the growing and staggeringly expensive infrastructure that will be needed to keep South Florida habitable even as the seas rise and climate changes produce more extreme rainfall from hurricanes like Ian, which drenched a large swath of the state just months ago. The factory, which sprawls across four city blocks in Deerfield Beach, belongs to a pump manufacturing company called Moving Water Industries (MWI). Founded in 1926 by a Deerfield farmer named Hoyt Eller, the company is now run by his great-grandson, Dana Eller. He’s hoping to guide the company through what is shaping up to be the fastest expansion in its century-long history.

Pumps helped build South Florida. MWI and its early competitors sold some of the first pumps that allowed homesteaders to come to South Florida, drain the water off their land and begin farming and building on it.

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