“You’d Be a Fool to Come Back”

It was less than two years ago.  A once-in-a-thousand-year flood (or so it was called) washed through the town of Ellicott City, MD and destroyed many of the quaint historic structures along Main Street.  It was shocking to see the extent of the damage and we were all saddened by the loss of life.  I wrote about it in this blog, here.

Just last week, one of the last shops along Main Street finally reopened to much fanfare, having survived the flood of 2016 to rebuild and rise again like a waterlogged Phoenix. The glory that is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the area (photo and source) had returned.  County and state officials had promised new plans and new solutions to protect the city from ever having to endure such extensive damage.

Then, this past Memorial Day weekend, as people were making plans for cookouts and family gatherings, a seemingly typical summer afternoon storm system rolled through central Maryland and dumped record amounts of rain.  Sadly, Ellicott City was once again the target of devastation.  Businesses and homes washed away and one person, a National Guard member helping rescue people in harm’s way, is missing in the deluge. To a person, everyone in Maryland who saw the news Sunday afternoon gasped and said out loud, “Oh no, not again!”

This time, officials estimate, the damage is more extensive; and the town, like a boxer who stood up after nearly being counted out, has been punched again even harder and is now lying motionless on the canvas.  Nobody knows what will happen next.  Business owners and residents in the area, I’m sure, feel defeated.  Even let down by those they trusted to protect them.

In a Facebook post following the 2016 flood, a local shop owner and resident of Ellicott City, Brian Kelm, wisely noted the following:

“For 200+ years the flooding in Ellicott City came from the rising of the Patapsco River and was mostly limited to lower Main Street. During major rain storms the water was absorbed into the ground in the surrounding woods north and west of town and the Tiber River, which runs east along Fredrick Road, was wide enough to handle the overflow that ran through town (rivers have the uncanny ability to be just as wide and deep as they need to be). In the past 20+ years developers and Howard County zoning board have banded together to pave over all of those woods with medium and high density housing…. When you pave over the natural terrain and add sewers and roads that lead directly to Main Street… you get a high speed roller coaster for the water to ride right through town. This ‘top down’ flooding has nothing to do with Mother Nature. This is a man-made disaster caused by greedy and/or uninformed people who decided that building homes above this wonderful city was worth the risk of destroying it.”

News reports indicate, that as recently as last week, petitions were being circulated among business owners and residents of the town asking officials to correct the runoff issues, rather than simply encourage rebuilding.   Bills were introduced in the County to prohibit new construction until the problem could be resolved, but none of that happened.  Nothing, it seemed, was really done to help other than provide financial incentives to bring the businesses back. 

One business owner contacted after Sunday’s second round of flooding by a local reporter was asked if she intended to rebuild. Again.  She is reported as saying that “without further mitigation efforts on behalf of the county, ‘you’d be a fool to come back.’”

Additional story and photo source.

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One more excerpt from a FB Post by former Ellicott City resident and business owner Kara Brook Brown who survived the 2016 flood.  This one was written the evening following the 2018 flood (photo accompanied the post):

 

Hi everyone! I want to thank everyone who has been writing/texting me about Ellicott City. I am aware of what is going on. I have been silent on the subject because I have been in a law suit with my insurance company. I still own the two buildings in the center of town that I bought in the 1990's. It was the income that I earned from those buildings that allowed me to change my career. This Ellicott City situation broke my heart two years ago. So much of me went into these buildings. It was all of my energy and all of my bank account for almost 2 years. 

Within ONE MONTH of the flood, Howard County Zoning and Planning tried to put pressure on us to rebuild. My neighbor and friend John was so stressed by the financial pressures and the building inspector’s threats he fell to his death while trying to make heavy-duty repairs to his building (theater on the corner) on his own. He was close to 70 years old. I never understood the urgency of the rebuild. It made no sense. We hired engineers and geo-techs to conduct studies. Not just on what level of effort would be required make the repairs to the buildings which after one year of study came to $2 million for repairs, but on the exact cause of the damage to the buildings. I had a unique circumstance that I can’t yet get into. On very good advice, I did NOT renovate. I was told that flooding was going to happen again and again, until the county spent $10 million dollars to implement a plan that they had since before the first flood. They knew they had a problem before the problem happened. 

There isn’t one thing that caused this situation. It was a convergence of several issues from poor planning to overdevelopment to removal of forests that absorbed heavy rains at the top of Ellicott Mills Drive and replacing that forest with a community center and a densely populated apartment home community. The roads and road maintenance and maintenance of water-mains were also part of the issue. They handled a problem that required financial investment, grit and muscle and tough decision making with public relations campaigns. 

I was never a member of the club over there but now it’s time for the club to step up and accept responsibility for their bad decision-making and accept responsibility for the repair of the mess that they’ve created, not by offering low-interest loans, which I found insulting, but by funding and handling the repair. Being historic and on a waterway with severely damaged sub foundation and foundation makes redevelopment just about impossible. My hope is that the leadership will accept responsibility. There is so much that we should all find troubling about this mess. I have been told repeatedly that the city is exempt from liability. How can this be? They should be held accountable. I appreciate all of the support from each and every one of you. I just got word that another car just landed in the church foundation