Anne Arundel County wants to buy flood-prone homes

One flood-prone home might be the key to keeping others dry in Anne Arundel County.

As part of a joint $1.3 million pilot program, the Anne Arundel County Bureau of Watershed Protection and Restoration, the City of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay Trust are taking requests to buy properties subject to f requent non- t i dal or stormwater driven flooding.

“There are property owners right now who are struggling,” said Jana Davis, the Chesapeake Bay Trust’s executive director. “The last resort, maybe, is give up on it. I think the county wants to offer those landowners another option. It’s a win-win.”

The county would use these properties to mitigate flood risk elsewhere, turning them into things like natural resource protection areas or stormwater storage.

Many attribute the increasing intensity of storms and flood events to climate change. Climate change could increase flooding with more severe storms and increased rain, said Juliana Greenberg, an environmental management staffer at the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis.

In the last century, average annual precipitation in Maryland has increased about 5%, and precipitation from extremely heavy storms has increased in the eastern United States by more than 25% since 1958, according to a 2016 Environmental Protection Agency report.

The county has budgeted about half a million dollars with the expectation of buying just one or two properties, said Matt Johnston, chief administrator of the county executive’s office.

“I don’t expect a wave of applications, but we are aware of a handful of property owners who have [flooding] issues,” said Erik Michelsen, acting deputy director of the county’s Bureau of Watershed Protection & Restoration. “One of the ancillary goals of this program will be to actually help us get a better handle on how big (or not) a problem this issue is countywide.”

A similar program was started by Howard County last year after severe floods devastated old Ellicott City in 2016 and 2018. In April, the county finished acquiring 10 buildings on Ellicott City’s lower Main Street that will be torn down or partially demolished to dig an underground tunnel for diverting stormwater.

Anne Arundel’s program is part of the county’s recent first steps toward long-term flood mitigation. The county also applied for federal funding to study areas and roads vulnerable to flooding in the county to move forward with long-term solutions, Michelsen said.

The county is forming a joint resilience authority with Annapolis, as authorized by the General Assembly in May, looking for long-term solutions to issues brought about by climate change.

Landowners interested in selling flood-prone properties can apply for the program but only after arranging a site visit with the trust, the county and the City of Annapolis.

A pre- application virtual workshop will be held on Dec. 1. Applicants should know as much as they can about their property’s history of flooding, Davis said.

The trust will look at properties’ potential for environmental projects and send those applications to the county, which will acquire them and remove structures for environmental safety.

The deadline for applications is March 4, 2021. Visit cbtrust.org/

anne-arundel-county-watershed-restoration for more info.