Ellicott City’s Main Street has been hit hard by flooding in recent years, but the North Tunnel and Maryland Avenue Culvert projects are expected to divert tens of thousands of gallons of stormwater per second to prevent future floods. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
An effort to mitigate devastating flooding in Ellicott City is moving forward with the announcement of two $5 million loans to complete projects that will divert storm-driven flash flooding away from downtown Ellicott City businesses.
The $10 million in loans are the first of from a state account created in 2021. In Ellicott City, the money will go toward two projects designed to move tens of thousands of gallons of floodwater per second off Main Street.
State and county officials are already looking to other projects, even as its ability to secure federal loans and disaster recovery aid remains uncertain.
“At a time when we’re watching the federal government cancel supports for emergency management and telling states and local jurisdictions that if tragedy happens, you are now on your own, in Maryland, we’re choosing to move differently and actually invest in our local jurisdictions, both in preparation and also in recovery,” Gov. Wes Moore said Wednesday as he toured the site.
Officials said the projects could be duplicated in other areas prone to similar floods including an area of western Maryland ravaged last month by flood waters.
“It’ll be used 100% here” in Maryland, said Department of Emergency Management Secretary Russ Strickland. “It’s not dependent on federal money, which, right now, obviously, we’re in a very uncomfortable situation with Washington.”
In January, President Donald Trump called for eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and FEMA in April said it was canceling funding for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program. The move hit funding earmarked for fiscal years 2020-2023, putting roughly $1 billion in projects approved in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in jeopardy.
Scores of federal lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — have called for BRIC funding to be restored.
The Ellicott City projects, meanwhile, will proceed with state money.
Gov. Wes Moore visits the site of what will soon be the mile-long North Tunnel for the Ellicott City storm project. (Photo courtesy Office of the Maryland Governor.)
Tunneling equipment — a 300-foot long device nicknamed “Rocky” — is expected to begin cutting a channel a mile long and 18-feet wide through granite 150 feet below ground. It will stretch from the west end of Ellicott City and terminate at the Patapsco River, with the capacity to move 26,000 gallons of water per second from downtown Ellicott City to the river.
A second project, called the Maryland Avenue Culvert, will move water from the Tiber-Hudson branch to the Patapsco River.
The two projects are part of a massive effort to make the historic mill city prone to flooding more resilient.
The county is coupling the projects with water retention ponds. Three ponds, with a combined capacity of over 12 million gallons, are already been built. Others remain in the design phase.
Howard County Executive Calvin Ball (D) called it “the single largest public works project” in county history.
“When complete, these projects will work together to reduce the quantity and the velocity of water on Main Street during major flooding events, and make Ellicott City a national, if not international, model of resiliency,” Ball said.
Moore said the projects will “save lives … but also help save the community and will also help save the state money.”
“Because, you know, what’s more expensive than preparing for the next big flood? Having to recover from the next big flood — immeasurably more expensive,” he said.
Moore said every dollar spent on flood mitigation saves taxpayers “an average of $6 in return when it comes to recovery costs.”
Flood-prone Ellicott City has seen three major events since 2011, including what was called a once in a 1,000-year storm in 2016, when flooding along Main Street damaged buildings and killed two people. Two years later, another storm dumped 8 inches of rain in two hours on Ellicott City.
The floods resulted in plans to make the area more flood-resilient, demolition of some buildings, debris clean up after big storms, an alert system, automated gates to high-ground areas and the stormwater retention ponds and diversion systems.
Initial cost estimates of $82 million in 2019 had grown to $130 million four years later due to costs of expanding the project — most notably the north tunnel project — and “external economic factors,” including inflation. But the project also grew more expensive as officials widened the diameter by 20% and more than tripled its length to a mile.
Money for the project comes from a revolving loan fund created in 2021.
“Even as we were fighting for Ellicott City, we realized that this was a bigger problem than this one town and the rest of the state could learn from us,” said Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery), who sponsored the Resilient Maryland Revolving Loan Fund and who was at Wednesday’s event.
She said the Northeast has seen “a 70% increase in extreme rainfall since the 1950s and the Chesapeake Bay could rise by five feet, by 2050. I’ve seen some horrible projections where we’re looking at $19 billion worth of damage if we do not invest. But that is not what we’re doing, because we are being proactive.”
The $10 million in loans for the Ellicott City project are about half the state’s revolving account. Strickland said so far there has been little competition for the money.
Jurisdictions that use the money agree to pay it back over time. Strickland said a repayment agreement with Howard County has not been finalized.
Del. Courtney Watson (D-Howard) said Wednesday the projects in Ellicott City could be a model for other parts of the state.
“We were lucky enough to be the first to be able to put these policies in place, to be able to figure it out, to do something that’s never been done before, to solve a tedious, complex public infrastructure project and puzzle for threats that didn’t exist 20 years ago,” Watson said.
“We hope to model and assist other jurisdictions who are facing the same type of problems, such as Westernport,” she said.
More than 5 inches of rain fell in Allegany and Garrett Counties on May 14, triggering flash floods that overwhelmed roads, schools and homes, and damaged utilities. Areas including Westernport and Lonaconing were some of the hardest hit. Moore declared a state of emergency in the region — an early step toward seeking aid from FEMA.
Strickland said initial damage estimates could be completed as early as next week. The threshold for seeking federal aid comes in at around $12 million, he said.
“I think we’re going to meet that,” Strickland said.
Strickland said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that federal aid will still come through, but is also looking at contingency plans. One such plan would use money from the state’s disaster recovery fund as well as a catastrophic event fund.
When asked if the funds could cover the potential $12 million in damages, Strickland said: “I think it would be very close.”