Drainage and Dredging Update From the Fourth Ward

Fourth Ward residents gathered Friday afternoon to meet Arthur Chew — the man with the unenviable task of trying to keep water off the land — and land out of the water — on the low-lying island of Ocean City.

Drainage and dredging are two of the city engineer's primary concerns, and he joined a meeting organized by Fourth Ward Councilman Roy Wagner to update residents on capital projects in progress on the south end of Ocean City. The 3:30 p.m. meeting was held in the social hall at Catholic Church.

Chew, a 1991 graduate of Ocean City High School and 1995 graduate of Princeton University (before moving on to grad school), used a PowerPoint presentation to highlight his department's projects, including:

• Website reports on capital projects currently in the works (updated every two weeks) on the City of Ocean City's website.
• A completed project to install underground stormwater chambers between 26th and 29th streets on Wesley Avenue. If successful, the system will eliminate the need for outfall pipes on the beach. "Everything worked great this past weekend when it rained," Chew said. He also said the system could send less rainwater from flowing downhilll toward Haven Avenue.
• Dredging between Carnival and Venetian Bayous just south of 16th Street to Clubhouse Lagoon at Waterway Road. The project is on schedule to be completed this summer.

But the topic of most interest to the residents was the everyday business of repairing roads that spend much of the year underwater — assaulted by both rainwater falling from above and tidewaters encroaching from below.

Chew described a pavement rating system on a 100-point scale that determines (dispassionately) which streets get improved and paved (the lower the score, the quicker the fix). Highly traveled streets (the north-south avenues, for instance) get an extra 10 bonus points subtracted.

Some of the winners in this year's calculus are the Merion Park streets of Argyle Place, parts of Waterview Boulevard and Oxford Lane (between Bartram and Somerset lanes).

Chew said the city takes a "Complete Streets" approach to street repairs — addressing elevation, drainage, paving, pedestrian, bicycle and other concerns at the same time. Part of the city's strategy is to try to raise roadbeds in low-lying areas.

Some residents questioned the practice, suggesting raising roads in one place creates flooding in another place.

Chew said the logic holds true for stormwater falling from the sky, creating the need for an effective drainage system. But he said in a place like Merion Park, where road elevations are as little as 1 to 2 feet above sea level, any tide a few feet above normal is going to create tidal flooding — making elevated roads the only viable strategy.

Chew showed a color-coded map indicating the streets in most need of repair on the island according to the 100-point scale. Immediate projects are listed on the capital projects page. Business Administrator Mike Dattilo said the city will try to add other potential projects on the list to the website.

While the Fourth Ward (as the city's largest) has more miles of roads and alleys than the other wards, Chew offered the following ward-by-ward rating of the percentage of roads with a rating of 50 or less (based on linear footage of roads):

• First Ward: 10.81 percent
• Second Ward: 11.65 percent
• Third Ward: 4.5 percent
• Fourth Ward: 7.75 percent