This blog was updated on January 3, 2023, to remove redundant content. Redundancy prevents sites from being crawled by google, thus allowing content to become popular in the search engine results.

Why didn’t the local government do more earlier to prevent flooding?

They possessed studies from years before the 1000-year flood that the city was headed in this direction. In a June 1, 2018 article, the Baltimore Sun entertained the idea of Making Ellicott City Safer. 

Among other concerns, the article questions what tasks Howard County has completed since the last flood of July 30, 2016, and more.

The truth: The efforts made after the 2016 flood were almost purely cosmetic.

Howard County was quick to cosmetically fix the sidewalks and pretty the place up to get back to business.

They backfilled my foundations within weeks of “the flood” without allowing my team to thoroughly inspect these foundations for damages. Just because the foundation wasn’t GONE (as in the Burgess Building) doesn’t mean that the car lodged in the church foundation did not cause structural damage to the property.

Furthermore, putting extra pressure and weight on the foundation and sub-foundation is unsafe.

Irresponsible willful ignorance.

Bullying and uncooperative behavior.

Accepting no responsibility.

That is the Howard County I came to know during this trying and difficult time.

In the article published by the Sun, I was quoted in this way, “Kara Brook Brown owns two buildings on Main Street. She says she felt pressured by the county to rebuild her stores but didn’t see the same urgency from officials to improve stormwater infrastructure. “We had an emergency, and it needed to be treated as such,” she said. “I’m not an engineer. I can’t tell you how much they needed to spend. But they needed to do more than they did. They didn’t do much. They fixed a wall. That’s it.” Kittleman says county officials have worked hard and fast to fix issues in Ellicott City, but most projects take years to complete. He says the town is a victim of unusually bad luck in getting hit with two rare, intense thunderstorms in so short a time.

This damage was caused by more than rain storms.

They fixed more than a wall.

They got through about 20% of their plan.

Maybe.

I happened to agree with county executive Kittleman, who explained that it takes years to complete projects of this magnitude. And Councilman Greg Fox, the optimist, defended the county’s efforts since 2016 to better prepare for flooding. “There’s only so much money available at a time, and it takes time to plan out the things that did get done,” he said. “I think we have to look at the bang you get for the buck with each of the solutions,” he said.

So why then were property owners given 90 days before they would be fined $250 per day after the flood of July 2016… where all repairs were to be made all at their own expense… when the county clearly has a hand in these damages?

Requiring people to spend money without a fix is oppressive and for naught. It’s an abuse of power and a waste of hard-earned money for the average citizen.

Asking property owners to spend their money to repair problems caused by inept government officials is just plain wrong.

It’s irresponsible.

It’s failing to be accountable.

Howard County government failed its taxpayers.