Spoke to my father in law last night who is a civil engineer and has worked on tons of projects involving roadways, bridges, and causeways, etc. He said EC actually collected bids for a culvert at the top of Main Street after the last storm, would've cost about $2M, but all it would've done is redirect some of the water at the top of Main Street (Rogers Ave side) and saved a few of those buildings, the water would've spilled back over and gone down Main Street in much the same way.
He also added that even if they installed a state of the art water drainage system and spent every penny in the world, that it wouldn't solve the problem. Drainage systems don't divert water, they simply hold it and let it out slowly at an appropriate spot. Even a massive, multiple times larger system than they would've built (if they could have built it) would have filled up and overflowed from this amount of water. EC is too low on the water table, too close to the river, and there is simply too much runoff to handle all the water. Maybe it wouldn't have been as much damage, but it still would have been catastrophic damage even if they spent tens upon tens of millions after the last storm to try and stop future flooding.
The city of Frederick put in an anti-flooding system after huge floods back in the 70's, and it's exactly what you're describing - it funnels all the water to a giant holding tank, which drains slowly. Frederick got a lot of rain a week or two ago - actually more rain in a shorter period of time than in the storms that flooded all of downtown in the 70's - and the system worked pretty well. There was minor flooding, but nothing like in the 70's.
But downtown Frederick is mostly flat. With the volume of water flowing downhill in EC, I have no idea what you would do. Also, it took Frederick like 20-25 years to get theirs built.
https://www.cityoffr...roll-Creek-Park
https://www.washingt...k-frederick-md/
