Will Old Ellicott City Flood Again

On an unseasonably warm belatedly-summertime day, the narrow, mile-long stretch of Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland, was jam-packed. It was the weekend of the Master Street Music Fest, a daylong event for local and unsigned bands that's been a town staple since 2012. Shoppers ducked in and out of the stores on the principal drag, which was clogged with traffic, and people with frosty cups of locally brewed beer hung out in parking lots off of Master Street that had been repurposed every bit stages. The mood was jovial—celebratory, even.

And there was enough to celebrate: The weekend marked the festival's return to Main Street for the first fourth dimension since 2017. Terminal yr, Ellicott City was still reeling from the disastrous downpour of May 27, 2018, when a severe rainstorm walloped the town, leading to flash floods that ravaged roads and buildings and killed one person. It was the second torrential, 1,000-year tempest to pummel the town in every bit many years. On July 30, 2016, heavy pelting soaked Ellicott City in a span of just a few hours, causing flash floods that inundated Main Street, wiped out storefronts and vehicles, and killed two people.

The three years since that first tempest take been tumultuous ones for this 247-year-old Howard County factory town, which is located most 12 miles from downtown Baltimore and has long functioned as a suburb of that city. Plans to safeguard the surface area from future floods have been pitched (and scrapped), with mixed reactions from residents and concern owners. Many Main Street merchants rebuilt their stores after the 2016 storm, only to have their work washed away barely ii years afterward; some chose to leave rather than take chances having their life's piece of work destroyed during another catastrophic event. And a new administration was elected in Howard County in 2018, which eventually led to an entirely new mitigation programme for future storms.

All the while, the threat of some other major storm has hung over the town. According to the National Climate Assessment, "heavy rainfall events have increased" in the Northeast—which the assessment defines as the area spanning from Maryland to Maine—more than in any other region in the country. The amount of pelting that falls during these events increased by lxx percent betwixt 1958 and 2010. And in 2018, several municipalities near Ellicott City recorded their wettest years ever; Catonsville, a small boondocks that begins where Ellicott City's Main Street ends, was inundated with more than 84 inches of rain terminal year. The question isn't if another storm of this level will happen, it's when.

Ellicott City isn't the only town in the country that's dealing with the aftermath of historic, catastrophic flooding. Earlier this year, several states beyond the Midwest and the southern plains experienced heretofore unseen levels of flooding that devastated towns and caused billions of dollars in amercement. And a 2018 report notes that urban flooding, which is defined as "an inability on the office of a customs to manage runoff from big rainfall events and to move the h2o off affected areas in a timely and efficient manner," has merely gotten worse in the past two decades. Co-ordinate to the report, around 3,600 of those events have happened since 1993—or one every two or three days.

"As nosotros run across increasing frequency and intensity of storms, it is our duty to take climate change seriously and take important steps to mitigating our carbon footprint and building resiliency," Calvin Brawl, the recently elected county executive, said in an interview.

But resilient infrastructure may not exist enough. The celebrated middle of Ellicott City was clobbered, in part, because of the suburban developments that sprung up around the town afterward 1960. Farmland and forests were replaced with housing, driveways, and big-box shopping centers with hundreds of parking spaces, creating geographical conditions that exacerbate the impacts of weather events similar severe storms. That suburban sprawl is, on a larger scale, contributing to climate change—and at that place are some who recall Ellicott City needs to do more to curb it.

Earlier the back-to-back floods, Ellicott Urban center was more often than not known for its quaint main drag—literally, a Chief Street—lined with small brick and wood-frame buildings, many of which date back to the 18th and 19th century. The boondocks was founded in 1772 by three brothers, who took reward of the location's proximity to the Patapsco River to create a thriving milling manufacture. It afterwards became a hub for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, with a train station (which stands to this day) built at the bottom of Main Street in 1831.

By the 20th century, both of those industries had ceased existence the main economic drivers for Ellicott City, replaced by tourism to its celebrated buildings and charming town middle. The structures that one time held taverns, lumber companies, and boarding houses were repurposed as shops and restaurants: a used bookstore in an 18th-century edifice that was once a saloon, a record store in a circa-1848 rock structure that was once a fraternal lodge, and more. Before the first alluvion in 2016, more than 100 businesses that lined Main Street generated some $200 1000000 in almanac revenue, according to a written report from the Jacob France Institute. Ball, the county executive, says Ellicott Urban center is the 2nd-biggest economic driver for Howard County equally a whole.

But the flooding laid blank how vulnerable Ellicott City is to natural disasters. The town is part of the Tiber-Hudson Watershed, a natural drainage area that has four tributaries flowing through its three-and-a-one-half-foursquare-mile expanse, all of which eventually empty into the Patapsco River. The land surrounding the streams within the watershed has been built up over the years, with a mix of modest midcentury ranchers and bigger suburban McMansions occupying shut to 95 percentage of the available space. That land is already decumbent to flooding thanks to its geological makeup (more often than not granite), but the uptick in development after 1980 has exacerbated the effects of suburban sprawl.

So there's the geography of the town itself: "Ellicott City is like the bottom of a funnel," explains Mark DeLuca, the deputy managing director of public works for Howard County. Main Street is built into a steep colina, with the Patapsco River at the very bottom. The watershed's four tributaries all feed into that waterway, and when heavy storms inundate those streams, at that place'south nowhere for the runoff to become but downhill.

"Everything that'due south in the boondocks is inside the 100-twelvemonth floodplain," says DeLuca. "So by all of our standards, that town shouldn't be at that place."

The Washington Mail service via Getty Images

Ellicott City has experienced its off-white share of devastating floods, including one in 1868 in which the Patapsco rose 20 anxiety, all simply obliterating much of the town. What made the flooding in 2016 and 2018 unlike is the fact that information technology wasn't acquired by the Patapsco rise; it was caused by super-intense storms that camped out over the boondocks for short periods of fourth dimension (about four hours in 2016 and half dozen hours in 2018). Both of those events were later classified equally 1,000-year storms, pregnant that, given the historical weather condition patterns, at that place was a 0.1 percent risk the town would experience rainfall that severe and devastating. Combine that with the other state-utilise and environmental factors of the town, and yous accept what DeLuca calls "essentially a perfect-tempest scenario."

Dramatic videos and photos taken in the backwash of both the 2016 and 2018 storms showed cars, trash, tree branches, and even the iconic clock that sat adjacent to the B&O runway station beingness swept downwards Chief Street at an alarmingly fast rate. Water surged into buildings, in some cases ascension by the first floor of low-slung structures. One time the floodwaters receded, much of Master Street was destroyed.

"[They are] probably the most intense storms that I've seen in this expanse, that we've e'er experienced," says DeLuca, an 18-twelvemonth veteran of the Department of Public Works.

After the 2016 storm, the focus was largely on rebuilding, besides as creating bulwarks against futurity floods, with then-County Executive Allan Kittleman announcing several projects that were intended to help incorporate stormwater in the upper part of the watershed. But much of the story after 2016 was about the resilience of the people impacted by the flooding. The hashtag #ECStrong popped up everywhere—on T-shirts, mugs, wristbands, and even as the name of a 5K run to benefit the town—and a yr after the overflowing, nearly all of the impacted businesses had reopened.

And then the 2018 storm happened.

"When the second alluvion hits, information technology's a piffling tougher. You lose a piddling bit of the chutzpah that people had [in 2016]," says Mike Hinson, acting director of the Howard County Office of Emergency Management. "A lot of people had blown through some of their personal money to get back open and at present they were struck again. So things inverse in that location a little flake."

The canton government besides had to change its approach to overflowing protection; clearly, a more comprehensive, long-term solution was needed. In August 2018, Kittleman unveiled an ambitious $50 million programme that called for razing x of the celebrated buildings on the south side of Main Street and replacing them with an open up space that would mitigate the roadway's funnel effect. Another seven buildings in a different part of town were also eyed for demolition, all in the proper name of putting inundation-protection measures into place throughout the town.

The Washington Mail via Getty Images

"The well-nigh experienced forecasters are telling u.s.a. that storms capable of producing these devastating wink floods are becoming more likely in the entire mid-Atlantic region," Kittleman said at a press conference announcing the plan. "Our demand to accommodate to this likelihood, and our need to first and foremost protect life prophylactic, has changed the conversation. I wish nosotros weren't at this point, only this is the change we need."

Only the possible sabotage of such a large number of Ellicott Urban center's buildings made Kittleman's plan unpopular, with residents, preservationists, and other county officials meeting to oppose it. "We felt [Kittleman's plan] was a precedent, a dangerous precedent, not only for Ellicott Metropolis and for the state, but a nationally concerning precedent," says Nicholas Redding, the executive director of Preservation Maryland, a nonprofit that focuses on historic conservation issues across the state. "We didn't want this to become something that other cities wait to as an example of what to do later on you accept some type of catastrophic flooding or disaster, because the knee-wiggle reaction should not be to demolish first and ask questions later."

Members of the public expressed their displeasure at the polls: In November 2018, Kittleman was voted out of function, and former County Councilmember Calvin Brawl was voted in. "It became sort of a referendum for Alan Kittleman in terms of his reelection," says Redding. "It hinged on this idea that they were going to spend tens of millions of dollars in demolishing a community and didn't really take a plan for what would come next and didn't actually know how that would touch the community. Not surprisingly, the bulk of folks in Howard County pushed back against that."

When Ball took function one month later on the election, 1 of his first priorities was to break the Kittleman program and arroyo Ellicott City's flooding problem with fresh eyes. "I spent a lot of fourth dimension listening to folks throughout Howard County, and what I heard was that they wanted a plan with more transparency," Ball says. "They wanted a programme that made rubber a priority, a programme that to the extent possible addressed the issues more than."

Those issues included celebrated preservation; keeping the character of the boondocks center as intact as possible was, for many, a top priority. So Ball pushed officials within the county authorities to approach the trouble differently. "I think previously the focus was, what can exist done as quickly as possible?" Brawl explains. "My charge was, what tin can be done to await at a boondocks that'southward almost 250 years [old] and prepared for the adjacent 250 years? That's going to be an investment. Instead of renting out a mediocre solution, allow'due south buy a keen solution."

That solution, unveiled in May, volition still require removing several buildings at the southern terminate of Main Street that sit over i of the streams that flows into the Patapsco River. Just the plan chosen past Brawl has elements that did not appear in Kittleman's mitigation efforts, chief among them the structure of a 1,600-human foot-long tunnel that volition divert water abroad from the Hudson Branch, a tributary that feeds into the Patapsco. This effort would too reduce the amount of water left on Main Street in a 100-year storm to 1 foot, compared to 4.5 feet nether the Kittleman plan. A final price tag for the plan has yet to exist determined, only it could cost equally much as $140 million.

Amid Ellicott City's stakeholders, the attitude toward the Brawl administration's new plan is cautious optimism. "We know not every building tin can exist saved. We're realistic in that sense," says Redding. "I call up that information technology'south [still] a heck of a lot, but it's certainly a better programme than what we were presented with before."

And Alicia Jones-McLeod, the executive director of the Ellicott City Partnership, a group that works with shop owners in the boondocks, says many of the folks she works with are "looking forrad to what's next."

"The business owners here are non monolithic," Jones-McLeod says. "Every bit far as what the program is, that'south non nigh as important as feeling like the county and the people believe in Ellicott Metropolis, and that there'southward work existence done in social club to make sure that people that live and work hither are safe. I think that some of that work is being done and the business owners recognize that."

But as with whatever massive civil project, there are lingering concerns. Liz Walsh, a county councilmember whose district includes the celebrated town middle, believes that more needs to be done to curb the proliferation of development in the watershed above Ellicott City, which is characterized by lackluster stormwater direction and the spread of suburban subdivisions. Building upon a evolution moratorium that was approved by the council after the 2018 storm, Walsh has introduced legislation that would put stricter regulations on new evolution in the watershed (while still assuasive for alluvion-mitigation projects to motion frontward), and encourage builders to incorporate greenish infrastructure into their projects.

Maryland did non have dedicated regulations effectually stormwater management until 1985, so many of the older developments surrounding historic Ellicott Metropolis are defective in things like proper drainage systems. While the stereotypical suburban developments that were congenital in the years since practise bide by those regulations, the very existence of this type of housing—frequently created by clearing trees and other naturally absorbent elements, and replacing them with hardscaping like driveways—has negatively impacted the surrounding area. Meanwhile, developers are often granted waivers that let them skirt Howard Canton's existing country-employ regulations, which prohibit things like building besides shut to steep hills or streams; Walsh'southward legislation would make those waivers harder to go.

"I can't conceive of a universe where we would add together to the volume of potential water when nosotros haven't done anything down here to mitigate what we're already dealing with," Walsh says.

The Washington Postal service via Getty Images

The idea of pulling dorsum from development in the face of climate change is not new. Three communities in the New York City borough of Staten Island that were ravaged past 2012's Superstorm Sandy take been largely demolished as role of a "managed retreat" effort to bring natural flood protections—marshes, porous state, and the like—back to the coastline.

Walsh's legislation doesn't go quite that far; she says her focus is "this pulling back from grey infrastructure and relying on greenish infrastructure—putting the premium and the value on green infrastructure." But despite broad public support, it has proven unpopular with developers and lobbyists, and even has skeptics within the Howard Canton government.

"A lot of the development that occurs now is and then highly regulated in terms of stormwater," DeLuca says. "I remember that the driver is really the storm more than than annihilation else." He points to a hydrology study commissioned by the county after the 2016 storm that found that if the area surrounding celebrated Ellicott City was undeveloped, and experienced the aforementioned level of rainfall as it did during that tempest, it would have been inundated with as much as 80 percent of the stormwater that ultimately savage.

Simply Walsh doesn't see her proposed regulations as simply a tool to curtail evolution; she also believes they will aid protect Ellicott City from the unknown—that is, the certainty that future storms are coming, and the doubt of how subversive they will exist. "We were using a 100-yr storm, a one,000-year storm for purposes of the legislation that's pending now," Walsh says. "We're sticking to a finite description of Ten inches and X time. But we don't know what the next one is going to exist, so we don't know what nosotros demand to engineer."

That dubiety remains the biggest concern for many of the people invested in the hereafter of Ellicott City. The plan put forth by the Ball administration is expected to exist implemented in full by 2025, and the county executive is optimistic most what it will do for this unique, historic community. "My goal is not only to help relieve Ellicott City and preserve information technology for the next 250 years," Brawl says, "just likewise to exist a model for every other jurisdiction that is facing these challenges of how to move forward in an constructive, unifying mode."

But there's no telling if another storm volition hit the area before all of those flood-mitigation efforts are put into place. The canton'due south office of emergency management has put new procedures into place to help alert residents to potentially dangerous weather events (including an alert arrangement that rolled out over the summer, and new signage directing people to higher ground), merely that will only go and so far if another ane,000-year storm hits. "Every time there's a threat of pelting or a large thunderstorm, everybody kind of holds their breath about Ellicott City," says Redding. "Nosotros need to set up that."

Amy Plitt is a Maryland native who grew up in Ellicott City; at present, she'south the editor of Curbed NY , and lives in Brooklyn.

johnsonreack1986.blogspot.com

Source: https://archive.curbed.com/2019/11/7/20952101/ellicott-city-maryland-flooding-stormwater-management

Share this post