Summer flooding on 30th Street in Ocean City, NJ.
The following is a letter to the editor advocating for increased spending to improve drainage on flood-prone streets in Ocean City.
As a point of reference, OCNJ Daily includes the following links to provide context on the issue.
The City of Ocean City plans to spend $29 million on drainage and paving projects over the next five years. The effort is part of a well-publicized commitment from City Council and Mayor Jay Gillian's administration to spend $79 million over the next five years on capital improvements citywide. The administration has said that all road projects will be designed, as best they can, to tackle drainage, utilities, curbing and paving issues at the same time.
All files are linked from the City of Ocean City website:
www.ocnj.us/capital-projects.
The letter is as follows:
To the Editor:
There will be a community meeting on street flooding at the Community Center, Room N116, 7 p.m. Wednesday (Feb. 11). I know that’s short notice and not a good time for second homeowners but we need to keep moving. We’ll hold another meeting on an upcoming weekend. Watch for the announcement.
Now is the time to act. If street flooding is to be mitigated, money needs to be allocated towards it in the Capital Plan, which is now under review. What’s more, grant money is available. Many surrounding shore communities are taking advantage of those grants. It would be a mistake to leave that money on the table. Are we getting our share of it?
What we would like to see is a commitment by the city to alleviate street flooding, a comprehensive and detailed plan for addressing it, and resources allocated to street flooding in the capital budget.
Some of you may have followed the discussion on online news media. Some of the comments were informative. Other comments suggest that there is little that can be done about street flooding, or that it will be prohibitively expensive to do so. That may well be true in the future. Our concern is with the here and now. Our storm water system is in bad shape. If you start with the assumption that nothing can be done about street flooding, nothing will be done about it. How about maintaining and upgrading our storm water system? We can do that.
There was an independent engineering study conducted in 2010. Check valves were rated. Of the check valves that were classified under a rating system, close to 90 percent were found to have either failed or to be in poor working condition. It was stated that replacing (or in some cases removing) check valves would go far to alleviating tidal flooding from 4th street to 30th Street. I’m not sure why they stopped at 30th Street. Perhaps the south end was outside the scope of the study. It was further stated that the projected cost of replacing the defective valves would come in at around $400,000. That doesn’t sound prohibitively expensive to me. We probably spent more than that on the study.
I can’t say what progress the City made towards replacing the defective check valves. I’ll try to find out. What must be obvious to everyone is that tidal flooding continues unabated. I believe that the way to evaluate the effectiveness of an action is by the result. Clearly we’re not getting the result we want. Further it would appear that we don’t have to break the bank to alleviate the problem. Is it that we can’t do anything about it (as maintained), that we lack the expertise to do anything about it, or simply aren’t motivated to do anything about it?
In addition to replacing those non-functioning check valves a whole series of recommendations were made in the study, including six pumping stations at select locations, replacement of pipes that have deteriorated, and in some cases rerouting storm water flow. It is a fascinating study, and also speaks to the effect of overdevelopment on the island. Do you know why West Avenue was named West Avenue? Why Haven floods so badly? I’ll bring copies of the engineering report to the meeting.
This group was formed to help YOU. You don’t have to live with recurring street flooding. Something can be done to at least reduce the occurrence. If you want to see street flooding in your neighborhood addressed, YOU need to get involved. We’re prepared to help but no one can do it for you.
Ocean City Flooding / Subcommittee of Fairness in Taxes
Eric Sauder
[email protected]
