Tidal Flooding Update

The end of West 12th Road at 8:25 am, Friday 11/5/2010

A special note of thanks to all the residents of West 12th Road who took the time to attend the Broad Channel Civic Association meeting last week.

Your presence at this meeting sent a clear message to our elected officials and city agency representatives that the issue of tidal street flooding on West 12th Road remains a priority with all of us!

The RBA Group, which has being retained by the city as a design consultant for this project, has started their work in this regard and has:

1. reviewed the completed surveys for West 12th Road, and,
2. Using the street survey data, overlaid existing data from 2010 NOAA Tide Tables to establish annual tidal street flooding information for our block.

The RBA Group presented an initial conceptual solution to street flooding on West 12th Road consisting of the raising of our street with the accompanying installation of temporary stormwater storage chambers and the construction of a seawall at the end of the block.

The RBA Group also discussed, at length, the potential impact of a raised street on all West 12th Road properties (sidewalks, driveways, decks, entrance steps, etc.)

The RBA Group also indicated that they would be requesting access to the backyards of West 12th Road properties to survey grade differences to ensure that street modifications (raising the street) does not place our homes and property in a “hole.”

The good news is that from all appearances, the RBA Group has not been constrained by the city in their efforts to design a viable solution to the problem of tidal street flooding on our block, They appear to be seriously examining this issue from all angles in an effort to arrive at a resolution that will not require the city to “revisit” this project after it is competed to “fix” unforeseen problems.

The city started the process of drilling bore holes on West 11th, 12th and 13th Roads to ascertain the individual sreet substructure's composition.  Drilling was scheduled to start on West 12th Road yesterday but had to be cancelled because of, you guessed it, severe tidal street flooding. They will try again Monday!

Our association’s Flood Mitigation Task Force Committee will be meeting with the city, probably in December, to follow up on this and if things keep moving along at this pace, we may realize a construction start date of the summer of 2011 after all!