Frederick looks back a year after devastating flood

May 15-- May 15--A year to the day after widespread flooding filled the basements of homes up and down Motter Avenue in Frederick with up to 44 inches of water, evidence of the disaster is still visible.

"If you go down this alley you'll see these garages with these rust lines up and down the way, it's like it just happened yesterday," said Beth McKew, pointing to a layer of dirt and rust extending about 2 feet up the garages in the alley behind her and her wife's home in the 900 block of Motter on Thursday.

About halfway between the alley's exit onto West Ninth Street and McKew's backyard lies a thick metal drain, which McKew and her wife, Denise Amann, refer to as the culprit in the flooding that has struck their neighborhood twice since September 2015. During heavy rainfall, such as from the series of downpours that swept across the region May 15, 2018, the storm drain becomes overburdened and the alley quickly becomes a lake.

The couple have learned from their experiences. Wading through knee-deep water, McKew and Amann moved their cars from the alley last year to avoid a repeat of 2015's flood, which totaled both of their cars.

Still, nothing can prevent the powerful surge of water from reaching their basement.

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"We've talked to multiple mitigation companies, and all we've heard is there's nothing we can do."

-- Denise Amann

"We've talked to multiple mitigation companies, and all we've heard is there's nothing we can do," Amann said with a fatalistic shrug, looking down into the stairwell leading to the basement door behind their home. "If we put in a heavier door, it'll just break, any pump we use will get overwhelmed. ... The solution is coming from the drain out there."

Despite the damage they experienced, McKew and Amann were fortunate that the federal flood insurance they signed up for after the 2015 disaster covered most of the $30,000 to $40,000 in repairs that resulted from last year's flood. Meanwhile, their homeowners insurance handled some of the cost to replace the possessions that were destroyed.

The last insurance settlement check arrived about a week earlier, but no amount of money or mitigation will comfort McKew and Amann when clouds roll overhead and raindrops begin to fall.

"There is definitely some anxiety every time it rains, because I'm afraid it's going to happen again. ... There's been a lot of nights where one of us has gotten up and run to the window to check to make sure the alley wasn't filling up again," Amann said.

McKew agreed, saying that the financial impact of the flood, paying deductibles and balancing making repairs with insurance payments, ultimately pales in comparison with the stress of having their lives disrupted and their property destroyed.

"I know that the city's taking steps, they were talking about all kinds of different studies and solutions [last year]," McKew said. "But I will definitely feel much better when I know what the city is doing to make sure this doesn't ever happen again."

Considering cost

After the flood on May 15, 2018, the city of Frederick contracted with the Army Corps of Engineers -- a federal agency that builds and maintains American infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad -- to study its flood-prone areas, including developments on Motter Avenue, Kline Boulevard, West Patrick Street near West Frederick Middle School and North Market Street near Schifferstadt Boulevard.

"The areas we are seeing flooding are areas developed before stormwater management," Zack Kershner, director of public works with the city of Frederick, explained a year after the flood.

Motter Avenue experiences frequent floods, in part, because it has only a few, sparsely placed pipes and inlets to direct rainfall away from the places where water cannot penetrate the ground. There are also no man-made ponds to catch and control the flow of water during heavy rain, Kershner said.

Kline Boulevard has a similar problem with U.S. 15 and U.S. 40 developed uphill of it before modern stormwater controls were required by the state.

"Everything uphill of you, drains down into you," Kershner said.

He met with the corps two weeks ago to review a preliminary model of the four flood-prone areas its engineers are designing. The model simulates the ground conditions and underlying infrastructure in different rain conditions to show how the water moves across the land and where it reaches the city's stormwater system.

The Corps of Engineers is expected to present its findings to the mayor and Board of Aldermen this summer and make recommendations for infrastructure improvements based on those findings in the fall.

Kershner anticipates the recommendations will include a mix of projects where existing infrastructure is redesigned to more modern standards and increases the capacity of infrastructure by installing larger or parallel pipes to move water away more efficiently.

The changes, however, won't be cheap.

The city has already proposed spending $3 million next fiscal year and $4 million in 2021 for stormwater projects to meet its state-mandated Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System permit, also known as an MS4 permit.

The permit requires the city to control nutrients and sediment coming off its hard surfaces -- roads, buildings, driveways -- that flow into rivers and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.

Flood control, however, is not an objective of the permit. The purpose of the permit is to better control the quality of stormwater, rather than the quantity, Kershner said. Knowing that flooding is a problem locally, though, Frederick will try to select projects that control both.

"When you put dollars to that, it's going to come to the least cost," Kershner said.

Groundswell

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 5 to 8 inches of rain fell in the central part of Frederick County during the initial flood between noon on May 15 and 10 p.m. on May 16, 2018.

On its own, 5 inches of rain does not sound like a significant amount of water. But when 5 inches of rain falls on a drainage basin that is largely covered by hard surfaces -- houses, roads, driveways -- the water magnifies as it rushes downstream.

That's why the YMCA of Frederick County at 1000 N. Market St. flooded with an estimated 10 feet of water during the flood.

Steve and Beth Baker, who have lived in Frederick for 30 years, told The News-Post last year how they watched the quarter-sized hail and knee-deep water from the front porch of their home in the 900 block of North Market.

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"It was just like the ocean. ... You could see a wave of water just sweep up the street and into our yards."

-- Beth Baker, 2018

"There was this little white Toyota parked across the street over there, and every time a car would pass, you would see it rise up like it was surfing a wave," Beth Baker said on May 16, 2018. "It was just like the ocean. ... You could see a wave of water just sweep up the street and into our yards."

Roughly 150 acres drain into the YMCA property, and the majority of the land is developed as homes, shopping centers and U.S. 15, which were built before modern stormwater management regulations, Kershner said.

"If I had to only be worried about the water that fell on my property, we'd be fine," Chris Colville, CEO of the YMCA of Frederick County, said as the flood's anniversary approached.

The YMCA's problem is not just controlling the water falling on its property, but the water running off the hard surfaces of everything uphill of it.

With no significant ponds to catch and slow the flow of the water, the 5 inches of rain could have swelled to an estimated 20 million gallons of water -- equal to 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- by the time it reached the stormwater pipe under the YMCA's parking lot, Kershner said. The pipe is large enough for a person to stand up in, but not nearly large enough to hold 20 million gallons.

Instead, the overfilled pipe pushed the water up through the inlets and drains -- that should have directed water into it -- and out onto the parking lot, road and YMCA's basement, causing $1.4 million in damage to the Market Street facility alone, Colville said.

The day after the flood, the YMCA was caked in green and brown mud. Hoses snaked out of the basement, pumping water onto the nearby grass with such force it looked as if it could have been attached to a hydrant. Muddy water had also flooded the swimming pool, which had to be pumped dry and cleaned.

To try to prevent another flood from ravaging the building, the YMCA purchased six exterior doors that could hold back 4 to 5 feet of water each and built stone walls with a removable plank system, which the staff manually installs before major storms to create a barrier between the lower floors of the building and its frequently flooded lower parking lot. This addressed what happened in 2015, when water rushed down an exterior staircase and into the building, causing $1.6 million in damage, Colville said.

During the 2018 flood, however, floodwater came in from underground and up through the sewer system, she said. The YMCA installed valves and quadrupled its pumps after the 2018 flood to protect itself in the future from this kind of flood, she said.

In all, the YMCA has invested more than $235,000 in flood prevention projects beyond the $3 million spent to clean the site after the two floods. It plans to invest $295,000 more to further protect the building from flooding.

Better than before

For homeowners and businesses in the parts of Frederick that flooded on May 15, 2018, it felt like a night where everything went wrong, but -- in fact -- a lot worked. It just wasn't enough to stop all the water.

One of the most significant places not to flood extensively on May 15 and 16 was downtown Frederick, in part, thanks to the Carroll Creek flood control project.

Underneath Carroll Creek Linear Park are four "train-sized" tunnels that siphon water away from downtown. Each 20-by-20-foot conduit can hold up to 10.4 million gallons of water. Together, the four hold a total of more than 42 million gallons of water, The News-Post previously reported.

The Baker Park flood plain, which can hold an additional 4.3 million gallons of water, is an added layer of protection. In the days after the 2018 flood, kids waded out to catch stranded goldfish in the park's flooded fields.

"If that flood project hadn't been there, downtown would have looked like the mid-'70s," Kershner said, referring to the 1976 flood when 7 inches of rain fell on the city in less than 16 hours.

Flooding towpath then and now

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A foot bridge along the C&O canal towpath was washed away in the flood in May 2018. While the waters have receded from the once washed towpath, the foot bridge has not been replaced.

Staff photo by Bill Green

That flood devastated much of downtown and caused between $5 million and $25 million in damage, The News-Post reported at the time. State Sen. Ron Young (D-Frederick), who was then the city's mayor, became one of the principal figures to push the city to build the Carroll Creek stormwater project, estimated to cost $60 million.

Maryland would not adopt its first stormwater statute until six years after the flood -- in 1982 -- and took an additional year to regulate downstream flood protection and control for two- and 10-year storm events, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment presentation.

The majority of the stormwater infrastructure built in the city of Frederick, Frederick County or across the state of Maryland, however, is not designed to withstand the kind of rain that hit in 1976 and 2018.

Carroll Creek can withstand a 100-year flood, which is a flood that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year.

Local regulation dictates that any stormwater project that connects to Carroll Creek must also be designed and built to control the flow of a 100-year storm, in order to protect the integrity of the flood control project, Kershner said. However, less stringent standards -- controlling for 10- or 25-year storms -- are applied to stormwater projects that discharge into other bodies of water, such as the Monocacy River.

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"Even today, you don't design a storm drain for close to a 100-year storm. Just like you don't design the church parking lot for Easter Sunday."

-- Zack Kershner

"Even today, you don't design a storm drain for close to a 100-year storm," Kershner said. "Just like you don't design the church parking lot for Easter Sunday."

As such, the majority of Frederick's stormwater infrastructure cannot handle a 100-year event, Kershner said.

After last year's flood, his team inspected the infrastructure of all the flooded areas and found no defects. This may be an indication that the city's stormwater infrastructure is undersized for the volume and intensity of rainfall of major storm events.

If a similar storm were to strike Frederick before improvements are made, the result would likely be the same as 2018.

The storms caused more than $6 million in damage to public infrastructure, including roads. An additional $31.2 million in structural damage and close to $7 million in property loss was also recorded, according to surveys submitted by county residents and businesses following the flood.

While McKew and Amann have weathered both disasters in their home on Motter Avenue, they can sympathize with other neighbors who may not have been able to recover as readily as they have.

Even still, the couple had a close call last year, when their basement flooded twice, first when the water poured in from outside, then again the next morning when the city's overburdened stormwater system backed up and the basement re-flooded. Thankfully, their federal insurance covered both.

Others have decided to leave, rather than waiting to flood again. At least one of McKew and Amann's nearby neighbors has moved in the year since the flood.

For them, it wasn't worth waiting for a third flood.

Want to learn more? Check out the Uncut podcast this week to hear from a resident who was caught in the 2018 flood and what their year has looked like as the waters receded.

Follow Samantha Hogan on Twitter: @SAHogan.

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