Residents Updated On Safe And Sound Plan In Ellicott City

ELLICOTT CITY, MD — Earlier this week, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball provided a progress report on the Ellicott City Safe and Sound Plan launched last December for Old Ellicott City’s ongoing recovery from recent flooding events.

“Since our last EC Safe and Sound plan update in May, Howard County government has been diligently making progress in Historic Ellicott City,” said Ball in a statement. “Every day we are working with Ellicott City residents, businesses and organizations to recover, protect and build a resilient future for this historic town. The 26 businesses that have opened or re-opened since last December are a testament to our continued partnership to make the town more resilient than ever.”

According to Ball, so far Howard County Government has acquired nine of the 10 buildings it planned to purchase on lower Main Street. Six of these buildings will now have portions preserved. Since February, all the buildings owned by the county have been cleared of debris. Additional work on the properties to be done include façade restoration, installation of new doors and shadow boxes, and other stabilization improvements.

FLOOD MITIGATION
The Ellicott City Safe and Sound Plan will reduce flood waters on Main Street to less than a foot in a 100-year storm and approximately three feet in a storm the scale of the July 2016 flood.

• Two projects, the Quaker Mill Pond and the H-7 pond, are slated to start construction within the next year, while the Maryland Avenue and 8600 Main Street Culvert projects are anticipated to start construction in FY2021.
• Rogers Avenue storm drain improvements are expected to be completed by the end of next month, weather permitting.
• The county has acquired the property needed for the H-4 pond, taking 34 units out of the development pipeline and securing 11 acres for upstream flood mitigation.
• Progress has been made on possible North Tunnel alignments. During the next year, Howard County will be studying to determine the subsurface conditions, including the location and nature of rock along each of the alignments, and another study to fine tune and select the best vertical and horizontal layout of the tunnel. A request for qualifications to procure the services of a design firm for the North Tunnel by the end of 2019.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is conducting an independent study of our flood mitigation approach to ensure we are taking the best approach to protect Ellicott City.

ENSURING PUBLIC SAFETY
Ball said that public safety remains his top priority and Howard County "will be better prepared for future potential storms."

For the temporary emergency alert system, a third speaker array was purchased and installed in parking lot “C” and as a result, emergency alert tones are now four times as loud in this area. The Office of Emergency Management also worked with the National Weather Service to create a new designation for Historic Ellicott City. Now, when there is a flash flood warning that impacts the Tiber/Hudson Watershed, the National Weather Service will specifically list “Historic Ellicott City” as an impacted area, instead of Ellicott City as a whole.

An enhanced “Clearing the Waterways” debris clean-up protocol has already resulted in the removal of nearly 10 tons of debris so far this year. Progress has also been made with private access points to allow the public to access private property and exit the flood plain during a flood event. This is particularly important on the lower end of Main Street where there are limited ways for people to get off the street if flooding occurs.

However, residents in the flood-prone areas would disagree that the safe and sound plan worked in the last storm. Christina Allen Page reached out to Patch after a Halloween storm struck the area and said that she, along with her neighbors, heard an airhorn sounding at 11 p.m. as a signal that neighbor Wendy Pidel's culvert was full and overflowing. In fact, it filled her driveway up to the hubcaps of her vehicle. Page's basement filled with water, too.

Page said everyone in the neighborhood stays in contact during times like this, sharing photos of the river as it crept closer to their homes. They all confer as to when they should abandon hope and flee to higher ground. The warning system just doesn't work, she noted.

"I put my two cats in carriers, packed two days of supplies for my infant son and diabetic husband, and my husband began to prep the car for evacuation. Water was running fast over our front curb. We got within five minutes of evacuating because the situation was becoming dire very quickly. It was only because the storm stopped precisely when it did that the situation was not severely worse. My husband spent the next day pumping out our basement. No sirens went off," Page said. "There are no evacuation notices for the residents or the people in the businesses. We're on our own, which is why we stay in such close contact."

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Ellicott City Residents Say Flood Mitigation Plan Failed