That suburban sprawl is, on a larger scale, contributing to climate change-and there are some who think Ellicott City needs to do more to curb it.īefore the back-to-back floods, Ellicott City was mostly known for its quaint main drag-literally, a Main Street-lined with small brick and wood-frame buildings, many of which date back to the 18th and 19th century. Farmland and forests were replaced with housing, driveways, and big-box shopping centers with hundreds of parking spaces, creating geographical conditions that exacerbate the impacts of weather events like severe storms. The historic center of Ellicott City was clobbered, in part, because of the suburban developments that sprung up around the town after 1960. “As we see increasing frequency and intensity of storms, it is our duty to take climate change seriously and take important steps to mitigating our carbon footprint and building resiliency,” Calvin Ball, the recently elected county executive, said in an interview.īut resilient infrastructure may not be enough. According to the report, around 3,600 of those events have happened since 1993-or one every two or three days. And a 2018 report notes that urban flooding, which is defined as “an inability on the part of a community to manage runoff from large rainfall events and to move the water off affected areas in a timely and efficient manner,” has only gotten worse in the past two decades. Earlier this year, several states across the Midwest and the southern plains experienced heretofore unseen levels of flooding that devastated towns and caused billions of dollars in damages. The question isn’t if another storm of this level will happen, it’s when.Įllicott City isn’t the only town in the country that’s dealing with the aftermath of historic, catastrophic flooding. And in 2018, several municipalities near Ellicott City recorded their wettest years ever Catonsville, a small town that begins where Ellicott City’s Main Street ends, was inundated with more than 84 inches of rain last year. The amount of rain that falls during these events increased by 70 percent between 19. According to the National Climate Assessment, “heavy rainfall events have increased” in the Northeast-which the assessment defines as the area spanning from Maryland to Maine-more than in any other region in the country. And a new administration was elected in Howard County in 2018, which eventually led to an entirely new mitigation plan for future storms.Īll the while, the threat of another major storm has hung over the town. Many Main Street merchants rebuilt their stores after the 2016 storm, only to have their work washed away barely two years later some chose to leave rather than risk having their life’s work destroyed during another catastrophic event. Plans to safeguard the area from future floods have been pitched (and scrapped), with mixed reactions from residents and business owners. The three years since that first storm have been tumultuous ones for this 247-year-old Howard County mill town, which is located about 12 miles from downtown Baltimore and has long functioned as a suburb of that metropolis. On July 30, 2016, heavy rain soaked Ellicott City in a span of just a few hours, causing flash floods that inundated Main Street, wiped out storefronts and vehicles, and killed two people. It was the second torrential, 1,000-year storm to pummel the town in as many years. Last year, Ellicott City was still reeling from the disastrous downpour of May 27, 2018, when a severe rainstorm walloped the town, leading to flash floods that ravaged roads and buildings and killed one person. The mood was jovial-celebratory, even.Īnd there was plenty to celebrate: The weekend marked the festival’s return to Main Street for the first time since 2017. Shoppers ducked in and out of the stores on the main drag, which was clogged with traffic, and people with frosty cups of locally brewed beer hung out in parking lots off of Main Street that had been repurposed as stages. It was the weekend of the Main Street Music Fest, a daylong event for local and unsigned bands that’s been a town staple since 2012. On an unseasonably warm late-summer day, the narrow, mile-long stretch of Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland, was jam-packed.
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