Storm Water Drains Cause Flooding, Residents Say

SEA ISLE CITY – This resort’s City Council met July 25 with a major portion of the meeting taken up with citizen comments on problems related to flooding.
“I’m here representing my neighbors and myself,” said one resident.  “I’ve lived in Sea Isle City since 1997 and over the last few months where we live between 38th and 40th streets we’ve had flooding where there never used to be flooding. And it’s because of the city installing storm water drains which pushes the water onto our properties. Even during minor rain storms, there is major flooding. We’re asking that a storm water pump be installed immediately or close the drain.”
Neighbor Nancy O’Brian said, “I’ve lived here all my life on property that my grandfather purchased in 1950. We’ve never, ever had flooding and now it’s a bad problem because of what the city installed as drains. I’ve called the city engineer but my calls are never returned.”
Another neighbor, Gary Parks said, “I agree with these comments. There is water coming out of the drain flooding our properties even when it’s not raining. It’s a problem all the time, even at low tide.”
Business Administrator George Savastano replied, “I’ll get with the engineer and will report back as to his evaluation and whether we need further studies. There is more to this issue than what you’ve described.”
With that offer quickly rejected by these residents, Savastano promised to set up a meeting with him, the engineer and any neighbors. “High tides are getting higher. Last night the high tide was 1.5 feet higher than the usual approximate 4 feet. This is a question of physics and we have a lot of work to do to help solve the problem. Our plan is to build a berm and there is still much we need to do,” Savastano added.
Council President Mary Tighe added, “We have flooding through the whole town and we can’t simply block drains because that affects everyone. There is no easy solution and we all want the situation to be corrected and are working to achieve that.”
Standing Water on Beach
Resident Allen Fisher raised another issue related to water, that of standing pools of water on the beach that have become stagnant.
“I’ve talked about this before, children in diapers are playing in this water, seagulls are in it, so you know it’s not clean.”
Savastano answered, “With high tides getting higher some of the water is not draining naturally and is pooling as you describe. Public Works is working on this and will continue to do so.”
Shared Services with Ocean City
Council approved a number of resolutions on the consent agenda with resident, John Henry, asking about one measure authorizing the execution of shared services between Sea Isle and Ocean City.
“Ocean City has need of a construction official and fire official as well and will compensate us for the cost to provide these services,” said Savastano. “Once the agreement goes into effect, we’ll actually see savings for Sea Isle. Ocean City will compensate us $10,000 per month for these services and our costs to provide them are about $6,800 to $6,900 per month.”
To contact Camille Sailer, email csailer@cmcherald.com.