Left adrift in climate fight Editor’s note:
While Annapolis plans project to save City Dock, surrounding areas still need flooding solutions
This is the second story in a two-part
series on the future of flooding in Anne Arundel. The first part, which ran in
Sunday’s paper, focuses on flood risk awareness in the real estate industry. A live forum will be held on
The Capital’s Facebook page on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Readers can ask questions for The Capital, along with
representatives from NOAA, the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, the county executive’s office and Maryland Realtors. To send them in advance, email ssanfelice@capgaznews.com.
Kevin Colbeck knows Davis’ Pub will not survive. In just the last 25 years, his 100-year-old beloved Eastport bar has stood firm through multiple recessions and even thrives in the coronavirus pandemic. But Colbeck knows it won’t survive sea levels rising and a storm drain system not equipped to handle ever-increasing rain. “You’r en ever going to beat Mother Nature,” Colbeck said. “At some point, you’re going to come to the realization that she’s going to win the battle.”
But just .05 miles across Spa Creek, local government is ready to fight Mother Nature to save the heart of the state capital.
The City Dock restoration project is Annapolis and Anne Arundel County’s most detailed plan at the start of their effort to save the county from climate change. In four years, the city notorious for flooding plans to fight climate change with updated stormwater pumps and a City Dock raised 6 feet.
The city says the project would, among many things, stop its notorious rainy-day flooding, improve water quality and transform its heat islands into green retreats.
But Doug Myers, a senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay
“You’re never going to beat Mother Nature. At some point, you’re going to come to the realization that she’s going to win the battle.” Kevin Colbeck, owner of Davis’ Pub in Eastport
Foundation, said the city project is just a patch to protect the status quo — and it couldmake thingsworse forEastport.
“These are decisions made by communities oftentimes to preserve what they have rather than being real with what sea-level rise and climate change are going to do,” he said. “Andthen itmakes itmore expensive to retreat when you have to.”
The effort to save City Dock is estimated to cost $50 million ormore, but government officials are still baffled about what to do for the city’s other flood-prone neighborhoods. Just next door on the Severn River, the federal government is reassessing how it plans to survive sea-level rise at the Naval Academy by researching alternative flood mitigation options.
City Manager David Jarrell said City Dock is manageable compared to Eastport and other parts of Anne Arundel, where it will be much harder to mitigate flooding.
“Eastport is all private property. They have a couple of options. Build seawalls or retreat. Those are decisions that are going to have to be made in the future. We’re not in that stage yet.”
Anne Arundel County government is starting to think about its plans for longterm flood mitigation, this year forming a resiliency authority, piloting a home buyout program and applying for funding to begin other projects.
In March, the state Senate passed a bill allowing resilience authorities to be established at a local level. Anne Arundel is the first county to set up its authority, meaning its group can propose laws and find funding for climate resilience projects. The City Dock transformation is the first of these, while much of the rest of the county is still being assessed for future action.
Joanne Throwe and Dan Nees of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability, laid the groundwork for this group, creating a financing plan to tackle climate change in Anne Arundel. They also created plans for Queen Anne’s and Charles counties.
The Anne Arundel resilience authority’s hope is to propose climate legislation by winter 2021. But the county has known for years that it will need to adapt to climate change.
In a 2018 study of climate change vulnerabilities, Anne Arundel ranked as one of the most vulnerable for home flooding among 63 counties in the mid-Atlantic region from New York to Virginia. Dr. Charlie Colgan, author of the study for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean, Anne Arundel ranks as one of the most vulnerable because of its low-lying topography with few natural barriers to flooding.
A study conducted by the county in 2011 found that sea-level rise between 0-5 feet put 35 miles of local roads at risk of flooding, primarily in the county’s peninsulas in Lake Shore, Annapolis Neck, Mayo and Deale along with South County.
The study found that streets in several areas could eventually require elevation or abandonment, leaving properties inaccessible.
“Elevation or relocation may be a future solution for some of these structures, but those options may not be feasible for all homes impacted,” the study noted. “A serious implication is that as the frequency and/or duration of flooding occurrences may increase, some properties may begin to lose their value and also their resale potential.”
The study concluded that the county needs to make residents aware so property owners can plan their future. Yet residents are largely getting their information from government programs that don’t account for future climate change impacts like sea-level rise.
Tough choices
The county applied for state funding to study Shady Side and other vulnerable areas to analyze how to address vulnerable road crossings. By next summer, the county plans to use nature-based solutions to reduce flooding and control erosion in Glen Burnie at its newest restoration project, Sawmill Creek.
But no matter how many plans the county makes, Myers says some places just won’t be savable.
“There’s probably not enough money in the world to implement all those things,” Myers said. “They are going to have to make tough choices as they go as for what infrastructures they’re going to protect and which ones they’re going to have to abandon.”
Abandonment is one of the county’s first steps after saving City Dock.
In October, the county announced its pilot program to buy flood-prone homes for conversion to flood mitigation projects. It is funded with about $500,000, which county officials say will be enough to test drive the program with just one or two properties.
An analysis by Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science, found that 510 Anne Arundel County homes valued at a total of $320 million are at risk of yearly coastal flooding by 2050. Those with the highest risk are188 homes in Shady Side.
Eileen Thaden considers that progress, recalling her fight with the National Flood Insurance Program that left her stuck in Shady Side and feeling helpless.
Her neighborhood, Cedarhurst, was perhaps one of the most damaged by Isabel. Thaden heard waves clapping against the house before water started rising up from the floor and she heard the deck break off. When she looked outside, the water rose so high it covered her white picket fence.
“It just looked like our house was floating on the water,” Thaden said.
She wanted to leave but felt forced to rebuild on the same vulnerable spot.
After the government refused to buy her property, Thaden, her husband Jim and their two then-teenage daughters spent five years in a cramped FEMA travel trailer sitting outside their home that got so cold in the winter she said ice would actually form inside. It would be eight before they could move back in. “Thatwas a nightmare project,” she said. Tha de nsaid she had to fight to get the full $250,000 her insurance policy guaranteed, and even then she said rebuilding cost much more. Seventeen years later, she said her family still hasn’t recovered.
“There are still things that aren’t completely done and aren’t back to where they should be, but you get to a point where you put so much money into it, you run out,” Thaden said.
‘We should be pissed as hell’
Myers says the City Dock project and the adjacent Naval Academy’s sea walls could displace more water into Eastport, worsening its already existing flooding problems. And when the next big storm hits, he said, the city won’t be prepared.
“These are very high-value commercial properties with the expectation that the next hurricane there will be a big fat check from the government and everyone’s going to rebuild exactly where they are right now,” Myers said.
“As non-waterfront, non-risk homeowners, which is 90% of the population, maybe more, we should be pissed as hell about that.”
Thecity has not announced its contractor for the project, and it remains unclear exactly how City Dock will be raised.
Joanne Throwe, who was part of the workgroup that identified City Dock as one of the area’s top assets to include in resilience planning, denies any risk of negative impacts to Eastport. The plan would have never been approved if there was, she said.
“It’s a lotmore than saying it’s a seawall,” she said. “I only see this as a benefit to the whole downtownarea.”
David Mandell, deputy director of Annapolis’ Office of Emergency Management, agreed.
“For every dollar we spend, we will be earning 20-something dollars back in return,” Mandell said.
“We’re talking about doing something that won’t just benefit daily lives, but will save money over time. That’s the whole point of local government. We’re making people’s lives easier and we’re doing it in a cost-effective way.”
The Naval Academy just put plans to expand its seawall on hold.
Last year, the academy designed an 8-foot extension for its seawall to accommodate for at least 50 years of sea-level rise, but that may change. The academy started an environmental assessment in September to form the Naval Academy installation resilience plan, according to the academy’s community planning liaison officer Zoe Johnson.
Johnson said the academy will take 18 months to address the yard’s sea-level rise and coastal flooding issues while laying out adaptational alternatives. Seawall repairs will be part of that plan, as will additional stormwater repairs and shoreline restoration, Johnson said.
Johnson said it is also working with the city to study impacts of extreme weather to assess what mitigation measures will affect the broader community beyond City Dock.
‘We’re not a bunch of little islands in the sea here’
Myers and Smithsonian scientist Pat Megonigal urge the government to consider more natural solutions to flooding. Marshes might not be as sexy as a raised-up City Dock, but in the long-run, they say marshes would be better for the community.
Megonigal leads the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’ s Global Change Research Wetland, the longest-running climate change experiment in the world being run in Edgewater. Marshes can decrease storm surge impacts, protect shorelines against erosion, lower greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, filter sediment from the Chesapeake Bay and act as nurseries for fish and shellfish, Megonigal said.
He asks those who live by the shoreline to be open to change.
“The health of the whole bay system becomes more sensitive near the water’s edge and that means we all have to be more sensitive about how we build and plan to live on the water’s edge,” Megonigal said.
Julie Reichert-Nguyen, a natural resources specialist at NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay office in Annapolis, agreed. Thinking about the impacts of climate change can be overwhelming, but change doesn’t have to be doom and gloom, she said.
“There are strategies we can put in place and have thriving habitats,” she said. “It just won’t look like it did in the 1900s.”
While waiting for the government to step in, communities can enact their own natural solutions for flood mitigation.
Some Anne Arundel communities like the Maritime Museum in East port, Pine son the Severn and Turnbull Estates have come together to build living shorelines.
“There’s no reason why groups of properties can’t work together to do that,” Myers said. “You can’t do a shoreline solution like that at a private property scale. It would be too small to do anything. So you would have to say ‘Everyone who lives on this block of 2nd street is going to pool together on a solution.’”
Rain gardens, rain barrels and installing pervious pavement to absorb stormwater are examples of small projects Juliana Greenberg, Environmental Management Staff at the Chesapeake Bay Program in Annapolis, said communities can take charge of. They won’t stop flooding as a whole but can help.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sea level rise expert Bill Sweet emphasized the need for collective decisions instead of people focusing on their own homes.
“When it comes to sea-level rise strategies, we’re not a bunch of little islands in the sea here,” Sweet said.
“The tide doesn’t stop at a property line. There may be localized impacts, but it’s a pretty broad phenomenon. It’s going to be a slightly different set of responses than one homeowner saying ‘Here’s how I’m going to protect my home from sea-level rise .’ Things up and out of theway of the tide is great, but if you’re driving through water to get to your house, if your septic tanks are failing, what good is it?”