Houston we have a problem----and it involves storm runoff

    The Washington Post image above of flooding in Houston Texas recently shows the result of poor storm water runoff.  Houston's building boom over the past few decades has worsened the flooding problem by the amount of land that was paved over.  With little accomplished in developing alternative means to control storm runoff Houston's future is one of frequent flooding.
     While we here in Howard County don't have the same risk of catastrophic flooding as Houston we are all aware of how vulnerable Ellicott City is to flooding.



 For us the impact is soil erosion that fills up our lakes and rivers.



      This runoff can be expensive and time consuming to correct as we have seen the need to regularly dredge all of our lakes as shown below in Lake Elkhorn.





    Our stormwater problem might be worse if the planners of Columbia hadn't kept in place a great deal of green space and wetland areas that prevent the flooding from being catastrophic.



     Maybe Houston's situation should all make us aware of how storm water can impact our quality of life and get us to look at how we manage the issue on our properties.

P.S.
     I have arranged a storm water talk and tour for Tuesday May 10th at 1 pm to 3 pm starting at the East Columbia Library in their meeting room.  Columbia Association (CA) will provide a van for a tour of several local rain gardens to demonstrate how CA’s Rain Garden Cost Share Program is helping residents manage runoff from their own properties.

    The tour will also stop at a vegetated swale, a bio-retention facility and a stream restoration/storm water outfall stabilization project to look at examples of the capital projects CA is building in open space to treat storm water runoff.

   John McCoy from the Columbia Association (CA) will talk about Best Management Practices being installed by CA to catch runoff and soak it into the ground in order to decrease the speed and volume of runoff reaching Columbia's streams, ponds and lakes.

   If you would like to attend email me at duanestclair@gmail.com   Space is limited by the van size for the tour.

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