Dewey committee recommends town funding for flood mitigation projects
The Dewey Beach Infrastructure Committee recommended the town partially fund flood mitigation projects for Van Dyke Avenue bayside and Jersey Street.
“The flooding is not going away,” said Town Manager Bill Zolper at the Jan. 30 meeting. “It’s only going to get worse, and the town needs to take steps to mitigate it.”
In the current drainage system on Van Dyke, rainwater from Route 1 and the Hyatt is pumped into two storm drain pipes that go underneath the beach and into the bay. The Hyatt pays somebody during low tide to shovel the sand off the pipes.
“When they do, the amount of water coming out of there that’s sitting on the street and below ground in those stormwater pipes goes rushing out to the bay,” Zolper said. “It causes a huge issue during heavy rains when there are high tides, and it also causes a safety issue when people are swimming and playing on the beach, and you have these two cement pipes sticking out.”
Chris Brendza and Amy Fitzgerald from JMT Engineering spoke about how the Van Dyke flood mitigation project will address those issues. The project has three overall goals: to provide water quantity control, to provide safety by relocating the existing outfall pipes and to enhance the water quality of the Rehoboth Bay watershed.
The project comprises four main tasks: site survey, hydraulic analysis, conceptual design and concept selection. The town will be responsible for funding 100% of the hydraulic analysis, while a Stormwater Matching Planning Grant through the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, along with other funds, will cover the other tasks.
The infrastructure committee voted to recommend town council provide $63,000 in funding for the Van Dyke project study.
Bob Palmer, a senior engineer at Beacon Engineering, also attended the meeting to speak about the Jersey Street flood mitigation project, which is designed to manage storm and floodwater drainage on the street using an Aquabox water storage system with four noncontiguous infiltration structures connected by underground pipes. The structures will all be traffic-bearing.
The project cost includes $40,000 of contingency items in case anything goes wrong or the road gets damaged.
The committee approved a recommendation to town council for $72,250 in project funding.
Pete Gori from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also spoke via Zoom about a flood mitigation project for Read Avenue, although the project is still in the letter report phase.
