Engineers discuss possibly raising York Road in South Bethany

Posted by Leslie Kopp & Christi Arndt on Tuesday, November 19th, 2024 at 12:43pm

Credit to: Coastal Point, Mike Smith

York Road in South Bethany frequently floods. It floods during coastal storms, high tides and full moons, and even on “sunny-day flooding” events, including earlier this month. Until Nov. 11, it had not rained in Coastal Delaware for more than 40 days, and yet residents came to the South Bethany Town Council meeting on Friday, Nov. 8, with photos of flood-soaked streets at York and Bristol Roads that had been taken that day.

AECOM is a global infrastructure firm that includes road engineering among its work. Kyle Gulbronson is a principal planner with the firm, based in Millsboro, and was retained by the Town of South Bethany to report on options for keeping York Road passable. The key issue is about emergency response and getting first-responders down that main thoroughfare in medical or fire emergencies.

“The flooding of York Road will never be solved,” Mayor Edie Dondero said to a packed town hall last Friday. “Kyle is not here to solve the problem but to try to restore conditions on York Road in the aftermath of a flood event.”

“We received a federal grant to review flooding conditions on the York Road corridor. AECOM was hired for mitigation options, and Kyle is here to provide them,” she said.

South Bethany received a $91,875 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant last year to study the York Road flooding situation and contributed another $8,750 from Town funds for the study. AECOM was awarded the contract.

Gulbronson offered three options: raising the road, adding a seawall to protect the roadway from flooding, or an option to do both engineering items.

AECOM should have a final report in December with budget numbers for each of the proposals.

“This is just an initial presentation, and we will provide the opportunity to ask and answer questions,” said Dondero.

Gulbronson said, “We at AECOM have worked in Sussex County on projects for over 50 years. We’re never going to eliminate flooding on York Road,” he said echoing Dondero, “but we can reduce the impacts. We have been analyzing tidal data from the gauge on Jefferson Creek and reviewing data from the flood meter for as long as it’s been in place. We also checked from 2018 to today.”

York Road sits between the large Jefferson Creek estuary and a major canal behind the York Road shopping center, leaving a major roadway in the town surrounded by water on both sides. It also is home to 152 dwellings, which enjoy the waterfront views the location provides, if not the flooding that comes with it.

Initial mitigation work was estimated by the Town to cost $2 million to start.

Dondero seemed to favor a “phased approach” to flood protection on the York Road corridor, starting with raising the roadway 6 inches or more, and potentially adding the seawall later.

Gulbronson said the best option was to create a wall “at the bend” in the roadway, about a quarter-mile west of Route 1, where there is a curve and soils along the rights of way have been depleted over time — making the road appear to sink even more.

“The worst part of the flooding is at what I call ‘the bend,’” he said. “It is at 1.5 to 1.7 feet in elevation above sea level. Flooding starts when the tide gets to 1.7 feet. South Bethany has seen a total of 96 days last year of flood impacts on this road in which the water registered above 1.7 feet or even higher.”

“This year was the worst, with 30 days of roadway flooding just since September,” said the AECOM engineer. “We had flooding almost every day for two weeks, due to a persistent storm off the coast earlier this summer,” said Gulbronson.

“If we can elevate York Road to a mitigation level of 2.2 feet, or about 6 inches higher, we can reduce the flooding more than 85 percent,” said the infrastructure expert of the reduction in flooded days or conditions.

“We can also build a seawall. It is not a mammoth thing,” he noted. “We would propose a seawall along the marsh edge,” at Jefferson Creek, “and around the lagoon. The elevation of the seawall would be 2.5 feet, or more than 6 inches above the ground surface.”

AECOM has also considered interior seawalls along the canals at York and Carlisle Roads.

The second option is just to raise the elevation of the roadway.

“We believe 750 feet of roadway would need to be elevated,” Gulbronson said. “We would raise the surface of the road by 6 inches, which will give us protection.”

The third scenario includes both the elevation and the wall: “This version would also incorporate the seawall with Design Option 3, and we could do both.”

“We cannot raise the road more than 6 inches, because of the grade and the rights-of-way issues,” said Gulbronson. “We would like to get a recommendation from the Town on these options.”

Councilwoman Chris Keefe asked about the cause of the flooding.

“Is it the tides, the storms, the sea-level rise?” she asked.

AECOM’s experts said it’s a combination of all three of these impacts.

“Some of the most prevalent is based on lunar cycles,” one homeowner noted.

York Road is getting hit from both sides

“We only have tidal information from the gauges,” said Gulbronson of the measuring devices on Jefferson Creek. “If we have heavy rain, it will also impact the tides. Once you get a canal event, you are also getting flooding from that side. That is why we are advocating for the seawall along the bottom of the canal itself.”

“When we did our borings and wetlands testing — our geo-tech work — the roadway thickness in that bend area is only about 8 inches,” Gulbronson reported. “Over the years, blacktop has been added because of subsiding asphalt and soil. The soils there are very bad, and the dredge from the canal — the spoils — were used to create land” along the road. “That is why there is subsidence in that area. It’s not good to add height to an area already compromised, so that is the sinking.”

“Our concern about adding more blacktop is that we would lose more, and access is going to be an issue,” he said. “We want to excavate all the elements in the road” — both asphalt and earth — “provide some geo-tech work and provide new earth in that spot. We would have to block partial access.”

“You get the best protection by doing both,” he said. “Raising the road by 6 inches would create a great improvement, but we don’t have a lot of room to grade, and wish to be respectful of property owners. There are a few other drainage improvements that will have to be created.”

Dondero asked, “What about a phased approach, starting with the road elevation and then adding the seawall? If it were to be done in phases, would you recommend the elevation of the road comes first?”

Bob Shields, council member and Planning Commission liaison, said, “This is a Band-aid approach. It might get us eight years of improvement, and we will have to come back and do more work. What about building a bridge?”

Dondero asked, “Who is going to pay for that.”

“This proposal will probably buy you 20 years,” said Gulbronson.

There was laughter from some of those in attendance, and one homeowner said, “We will all probably be dead by then!”

“I agree with you that this not a permanent fix. The Town put out an RFP asking for economical options, so this is our recommendation,” offered Gulbronson. “The problem is we don’t have the room to grade, and we don’t want to start creating ponding or water on people’s property.”

“I would like to know how much all this is going to cost,” Shields said.

Dondero added, “This is not the only roadway in town that floods. It’s not the only problem in town where this will be addressed.”

Gulbronson said, “We are hoping to get some consensus today so we can come back to you with price estimates quickly, as soon as possible.”

Dondero noted, “We are hearing about these recommendations today for the first time as well.” She reminded those in attendance that the council would need time to look at the proposals.

Bristol Road is the lowest road in the town, and residents of Bristol came to tell the council that.

“Flooding happens constantly,” said one homeowner. “There is standing water today on my road, and it has not rained in 40 days. We have nuisance flooding.”

“We have to start somewhere, and York is the major artery,” said Dondero.

David Van Wagnor, who lives on Bristol, confirmed concerns about low-lying roadway.

“I am a professional engineer and work at NAVSEA. I understand how all this works. I also have some Dutch in my heritage, and we are experts at building dikes. I am sure the marginal soil settlement causes these flooding events,” he said. “Just on York Road, we had 30 days of flooding since September, and I have to keep wader boots in my house just to walk outside. I have to get out of my house somehow,” he added.

“I have studied this flooding, and I have watched the water come in from the street, where there is a low level, and also from the boat ramp” on Jefferson Creek. “I have had to cut a trench and fill plastic sandbags to protect my home,” Van Wagnor said.

“It is chronic and persistent. Elevating the road 6 inches would mitigate the impact, except for during hurricanes. I also took a picture of the roadways, and we have water today.”

“Along the Bristol Road subset of the York Beach roadways, we need your help. And when we decide the course of action, we need to elevate the roads for emergency vehicles. Bristol Road is seeking elevation as well,” said Van Wagnor.

Bristol was repaved several years ago, noted one council member. But the council was not sure if there was any change in the elevation.

“So it is nicely paved, but we are also underwater,” quipped Van Wagnor.

Jim Bouboulis lives on the corner of Bristol and York, “So I get the joys of both sides,” he said. “If you raise the road, the water comes from the road under my house, and I am up on pilings. The million-dollar question is, if you raise York Road, where is that water going?”

Gulbronson said that drainage for York Road at the new elevation would have to be part of the equation.

“We are looking at our stormwater management to address the drainage,” said Dondero. “We are checking the valves so that the water does not flow back into town, and drain work is very high on our list of priorities.”

Gulbronson confirmed, “We don’t want to just push the problems somewhere else.”

Dondero said that drain maintenance is in progress and all of the drains are being cleaned out.

“That is the purpose of the hydraulics work and H&H study that is part of this,” she noted.

“These are problems that have been brewing for years and years,” said the mayor. “We need a starting place. We made a decision on York Road, and we can only do one point at a time. We want to fix these problems to the extent that we are able.”

“There is no ‘We are doing this but abandoning somebody else,’” she said of the Town’s stance.

Gulbronson said, “We can mitigate 85 percent of the nuisance flooding if we do both solutions, including the raising of the road and the seawall. The seawall will take longer, because we need wetlands permits and permission from some of those homeowners.”

“For raising the road, we are only talking about 750 feet. We can get that constructed and the road elevation going very quickly,” said Gulbronson.


If you are interested in a purchase or sale in the Bethany Beach area, as well as areas surrounding the Southern Delaware Beaches, please give our office a call to discuss your options (302) 541-5207

Leave A Comment

Format example: yourwebsitename.com