JOSH DAVIS/BAYSIDE GAZETTE
A stormwater pond, or offline wetland, near Flower Street in Berlin is one of several improvements completed in the town during the last several years said to have helped reduce flooding. The town recently received a $75,000 grant for additional stormwater projects.
By Josh Davis, Associate Editor
(Dec. 20, 2018) The Town of Berlin on Friday announced it had received a $75,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust for stormwater improvements and a new community outreach program.
According to its website, Chesapeake Bay Trust “awards more than $10 million in grant funding each year to hundreds of nonprofits and community organizations throughout the region for hands-on projects that are ensuring a cleaner, greener, healthier Chesapeake watershed for years to come.”
During the last several years, the town has received more than $2 million in grants from national, state and local agencies to pay for stormwater improvements throughout Berlin. The latest grant will help pay for construction of a submerged gravel wetland, as well as fund a public outreach campaign on stormwater issues through a partnership with Maryland Coastal Bays.
Berlin and Maryland Coastal Bays submitted the grant application jointly, with coastal bays taking taking the lead on the outreach component, according to a Friday press release.
“Partnerships continue to keep us cool,” Mayor Gee Williams said in the release. “We look forward to working with Maryland Coastal Bays to address flooding around Graham Avenue and Grice Street.”
Town Administrator Laura Allen said the outreach component would help citizens understand stormwater issues, including “ways that they can help manage stormwater on their property.”
“We’re going to be using this project as a demonstration of our best practices that we follow, but also as an opportunity to help folks get a deeper understanding of stormwater,” she said.
Allen said the submerged gravel wetland would be constructed on a piece of town-owned property that’s adjacent to the Burley Oak brewery and located on the corner of Graham Avenue and Old Ocean City Boulevard.
“It’s where the old electric substation used to be,” she said. “That area of Graham, Grice and Nelson [streets] is prone to flooding. It’s one of the high priority areas on the Army Corps of Engineers study and, when we were completing our projects with the $2 million of grant money that we had, we were not able to complete all of the work that we had planned to do in that neighborhood because we didn’t have sufficient funding.”
Efforts on Flower Street, William Street and Showell Street have managed to significantly reduce flooding in the town, according to a 2017 EA Engineering, Science and Technology Inc. report.
The Town Council in February approved a stormwater priority list and announced it would seek $1.2 million in grants to increase conveyance and piping capacity, and create an offline wetland, near West Street and Abbey Lane. An “offline” wetland is not directly connected to the natural stream flow, but can be used to divert stormwater from its natural course by using weirs.
Additionally, $725,000 was sought for stream relocation and restoration of Bottle Branch at Decatur Street. Projects in the priority list totaled about $3.5 million
“There was still some outstanding work that we wanted to do, so we’ve been submitting grant applications to … pick up some other projects in the second tier of stormwater priorities that the council adopted,” Allen said. “We submitted several grant applications in the summer [and] we were unsuccessful, but in that process we made really good, strong partners in the Department of Natural Resources and folks that help manage the money at the Chesapeake Bay Trust.”
Allen said representatives from both groups visited several sites in the town “and we submitted additional grant applications to other funding programs.”
“In terms of scope, this will be a smaller project than the offline wetland that you see behind the multipurpose building [on Flower Street]. It’s a submerged gravel wetland, so it’s going to function a little bit differently than an offline wetland. It’s going to have some piping drainage structure underneath, nothing that would be visible to the naked eye,” Allen said.
“But, in talking about this project with Darl Kolar of EA Engineering, there’s a natural movement of water in that area that sort of created the perfect opportunity to create a … little holding area. And so, I had talked to the Mayor and Council about using the money for that purpose, and they liked the idea,” she added.
Allen said additional stormwater efforts in Berlin were currently focused on maintenance. She said the town would pursue additional grant funding next year.
The Graham Avenue project is expected to wrap by Sept. 1, 2019.