The state of Old Ellicott City is in a flux as Hurricane Florence threatens to bring at least some rain to the saturated city.
Devastating flooding has wiped out businesses, ruined roadways, and taken lives.
The Howard County Conservancy coming together to discuss what the best option is moving forward.
“We’re really seeing a variety of perspectives that are sort of coming to the surface on this issue,” said Howard County Conservancy Executive Director Meg Boyd. “There’s a Hydrologists whose going to speak to the flood waters and if we do some of the remediations it’s not expected to completely do away with flooding maybe reduce it.”
They are bracing down with sandbags for any rain.
The people who love the area given the chance to share their ideas
“We should keep these buildings intact with no human occupation whatsoever,”. said William Nichols. “Declare it a state and or National Park. Give the owners fair market value for their property move everybody out. Turn it into a museum and have no permanent occupation from Caplan’s down and save the buildings that’s my goal.”
Young students bringing a fresh perspective to an old city with the potential for more future problems.
“We’re getting education and important facts that maybe some adults didn’t,”. Said Prerna Polepally a Marriott Ridge High School Sophomore. “I feel like we have the chance to use that. As younger brains, we have other ideas like maybe non-traditional ideas.”
Through a grant, the students will start brainstorming more ideas and create solutions.
“Last year what we did for our watershed was plant some more native plants that would allow for runoff to actually soak into the plants rather than going into bays and streams leading to less pollution,” said Sukriti Roy a Sophomore at Marriott Ridge High School. “We could do something like that especially with floods obviously there would probably be more pollution because it would gather all that water so that’s a pretty good idea.
There will be a county meeting Monday morning at 8:30.
There they will discuss the plan for the historic buildings in the city.
