OCEAN CITY – Officials say no immediate action is needed to address recent flood events in Ocean City.
On Wednesday, Planning and Community Development Director Bill Neville presented members of the Ocean City Coastal Resources Legislative Committee (Green Team) with an update on the town’s nuisance flood report for 2022.
He noted that while the resort reported five nuisance flood events last year, no immediate action was needed.
“If we end up with five nuisance flood events for the year, we are within that parameter of not taking any dramatic action yet,” he told committee members this week. “We established through our plan that once nuisance flood events exceeded 10 to 12 events per year, then the committee would prepare recommendations to forward to council about what we should do about it.”
A couple of years ago, the state of Maryland required coastal communities to prepare a plan outlining what the town can do to address nuisance flooding, or flooding that causes public inconveniences such as road closures or overwhelmed storm drains. Part of that project, Neville said, was a commitment to collect flood data for a five-year period.
“What we set up was a flood map where we said we’re going to track both high-tide flooding and flooding that was caused by heavy rainfall,” he explained. “We’ve completed two years of data collection, so we are headed into year three.”
Using news reports and the MyCoast reporting tool, Neville told community members the town was able to collect flood data over the course of 2022. That data, published on the town’s website, showed one nuisance flood event in each of the first three quarters of 2022 and two nuisance flood events in the fourth and final quarter.
“The beginning of October was one of our multi-tide cycle nuisance flood events caused by whatever hurricane headed up the coast,” he said. “It ended up going off the coast, so it didn’t hit us directly, but it obviously caused a high-tide situation around Oct. 3. That was when our concert event got canceled.”
With five nuisance flood events reported in 2022, Neville reiterated the committee did not need to take immediate action.
“What we decided last year at this time was that there weren’t any major red flags that would cause us to forward recommendations for mitigation to the council,” he said. “And I think we’ll come to that same conclusion here when we have a chance to review all four quarters.”
Ocean City Surf Club President Tommy Vach questioned what recommendations the committee would make.
“What would you do when you get to 10 or 12 flooding events?” he said.
Neville said state agencies are encouraging communities to develop their own recommendations. He noted, however, that officials are researching at-risk watersheds and first-floor elevations of properties within those areas.
“We’re slowing collecting this information so we’re ready to do something about it …,” he replied. “We can’t elevate the whole island by two feet, but we can at some point decide that in our most at-risk areas we can do something about it.”
Councilman Peter Buas, committee liaison, also highlighted ongoing efforts within the town’s planning and public works department. He also pointed to capital projects that will address nuisance flooding.
“They are always ahead of the curb,” he said.
Neville this week also presented committee members with an report on the town’s hazard mitigation plan, which is currently in the process of being updated.
“We did an update, and it was sent to the state agency and FEMA for review,” he said. “I believe we have received comments back.”
Neville said those comments would be reviewed at a work session with the Mayor and Council in February.
“Hopefully, we can get it approved in March,” he added.
