Tampa Spends Nearly $650,000 on a Second "Spyder" to Grade Its Ditches Before Peak Storm Season

The City of Tampa has bought a second specialized ditch-grading machine for nearly $650,000, and it has already been working in city ditches for several weeks. The purchase was announced on July 29, roughly at the start of the August-through-October stretch when tropical systems most often hit Florida and when street and yard flooding generates the largest share of complaints in Tampa neighborhoods.

The machine is a Menzi Muck M445x, a Swiss-built walking excavator that city crews call a "Spyder." It stands on four hydraulic legs and drives all four wheels, which lets it work steep banks and deep ditches where a conventional excavator would slide or simply not fit. The city says the Mobility Department made the purchase with the support of Tampa City Council.

Tampa already owned one. That machine is more than 10 years old and will keep running for the rest of its serviceable life, the city said, rather than being retired now that a newer one has arrived.

What the crews have actually cleared

Through mid-June, in-house Stormwater Operations crews had graded more than 42,000 feet of ditches, about 8 miles. The city says that is more than double what was finished over the same period last year.

Set against the whole system, it is a small slice. There are nearly 200 miles of ditches inside the city limits.

The pace was already ahead of last year's earlier in 2026. In a March update, the city reported more than 13,400 linear feet of ditches graded and roughly 1,630 tons of debris removed through February, counting both in-house crews and contractors. That same January-February window included 137,807 linear feet of stormwater pipe cleaned, 137.25 tons of debris pulled out of pipes, 42 cave-ins repaired, and 4.91 tons of trash removed from stormwater ponds.

One job gives a sense of scale. Local news reports said the Spyder was used to pull 250 tons of debris out of a stormwater ditch off West Boy Scout Boulevard, in an area officials described as nearly impossible to reach with standard equipment.

Five people can drive it

The limiting factor is not just machinery. The city says five employees are currently approved to operate the Spyders, which sets a hard ceiling on how many hours the two machines can log in a week no matter how much ditch is left. The city has not said whether it plans to certify more operators.

Grading a ditch is not glamorous work. It means reshaping the slope, stripping out overgrown vegetation, and hauling off the sediment and trash that have filled in the bottom, so water moves instead of ponding at the low point of somebody's street.

The yard-debris fines are real

The city has repeatedly asked residents and lawn services to stop blowing grass clippings and leaves into storm drains. It is not only a flooding problem. Fines start at $75 for a first violation and climb to as much as $450 for repeat offenders, and the city directs residents to report violations to Code Enforcement.

Anyone who wants to check whether a specific complaint has been worked can look it up. Tampa publishes two interactive stormwater dashboards, one for open work orders and one for closed ones, showing completed and ongoing jobs across the city. Neither the July announcement nor the March update said which neighborhoods are next on the grading schedule, or how much of the remaining 190-plus miles the city expects to reach before the season winds down in November.

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