Commissioner - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to The Open Agenda, a podcast where we take you behind the scenes of Queen's County government and introduce you to people and projects that help keep our community running every day.

Some of the most important work happening in local government isn't always the most visible. Whether it's managing stormwater, maintaining infrastructure, or planning for flooding before the next big storm arrives, there's a tremendous amount of work happening behind the scenes that most of us never think about until we need it.

And today, we're talking with two members of the Department of Public Works who spend their days solving those challenges. Joining us are Lee Edgar, Chief of Engineering, and John Kling, the Floodplain Manager.

We'll discuss everything from stormwater improvements at 4-H Park and what goes into managing drainage throughout the county to flood zones, permitting, wetland mitigation, and what it's really like to work as an engineer in local government.

So whether you've ever wondered why a drainage project takes months to complete, what those FEMA flood zone maps actually mean, or how the county prepares for future flooding, we think you'll enjoy this conversation. I consider this agenda open.

Lights on, might check. What's happening with QAC next? Go behind the scenes with Bruce and Beth. The conversation shaping the county's future.

This is the open agenda.

Today we're joined by two members from our Department of Public Works, Lee Edgar, Chief of Engineering, and John Kling, the Floodplain Manager. Thank you both for being here.

Yeah. Thank you. It's our pleasure. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, Lee. We know that you're a lover of old film, photography. You like your coffee made a certain way. Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you.

Well, thank you. No, that's right. Really, I'm in the wrong century. But no, so actually originally grew up in Iowa and I've been here in Queen Anne's County now for over 20 years and serving as the chief engineer in the engineering division. We administer the county's stormwater management ordinance, floodplain management ordinance, and we coordinate the development review process with planning and zoning. So all the public works review for roads, water, sewer, stormwater, floodplain, Those are our comments and, you know, working through permits and site plans with planning and zoning. And then the other half of what the engineering division does is we maintain all the county facilities. So detention center, libraries, office building, television studio, like that's us. Yeah. So what made you get into this? You know, in high school, they always said, oh, you're really good at math and science. You should do engineering, right? Okay, right? And we had a county engineer in town. And so my parents suggested you should really meet with the county engineer and see what he does. And so I did. I met with the county engineer and found out some of the things that he worked with. And it was county roads, ditches, and drainage. And one of the things that resonated with me as he talked about, he was showing the things he did and how every day was a little bit different and working directly with the constituents and really the people who are my neighbors. I thought, well, that's kind of cool. I can do something with roads and cars. good at math and science and work with my neighbors. And so I went into civil engineering with the idea that I want to be a county engineer.

And fast forward, it worked out. That's right. And then, John, I know little about your Eagle fandom. Yes, definitely. A hunter. I am. Former educator.

Yeah, a long time ago.

Very long time ago.

Tell us a little bit more. Well, I grew up in Delaware, joined the military, was in the Army, spent some time in the Army National Guard, retired from the Army National Guard after about 24 years of service. In that time frame, I started, I taught a little bit, realized I wasn't really the greatest teacher in the world, so I decided to go a different direction. I went to work for a soil conservation district in Kent County, reviewing stormwater management there and sediment control permits. Got me exposed to a lot of different things, and from there I went to a den rec for environmental scientists for a while in their air quality division, and then I applied for this job, which was the floodplain, well it wasn't the floodplain management job, it was an engineering technician with the intent of being the floodplain manager, I've been here ever since. So I got certified in floodplain manager in 2006. So it's been a while.

Very cool. Well, you guys, you both made it to your goals. So I'm proud of you both. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Let's get into the action, though, huh?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm super excited to talk to you guys today just because the stuff that you guys do are things that happen behind the scenes. It's stuff that people do not see at all. But it has a huge impact on our daily lives.

Yeah, I mean, there's things, we talked about drainage, you already talked about flooding, infrastructure, and people might not notice when all that stuff starts to go wrong. So you talked a little bit about that, like just the things that happen behind the scenes you might not even see.

Absolutely, and we really appreciate the opportunity to be here and do this. Really, this is fabulous. As you indicated, there is a lot behind the scenes. There's a lot of intricacies and details and a lot of reasons why things are the way they are. permitting and plan review and things are not a favorite topic for a lot of people, but they're there for a reason. And we have examples throughout the county, you know, predating regulation. You know, it's different evils. You know, we have developments that occurred before we had stormwater regulation and floodplain regulation. And, you know, the folks that live in their areas, they deal with those challenges every day. And now we have developments now where there's a lot of regulation and It's some work, and we try to ease that pain, but it's there for a good reason. A lot of people don't always recognize what that reason is, so we're happy to be here to talk about it.

Yeah, and you say there's lots of multiple projects. Let's pull one out, can we? Absolutely. All right, the 4-H Park Stormwater Project, 2024. We did improvements at the 4-H Park. What was the goal of that project?

Well, that was a good one. That's a fun one because, you know, here we're working at the 4-H Park, which is a destination for lava residents, particularly every year for the county fair, but other things as well. And the 4-H Park, it's been there for, John, what is it, about... 50, 60 years now, it's been established and gets a lot of use, but one of the things that people have been aware of, when it rains, it is a muddy mess, and a lot of the infrastructure out there has been there for quite some time. And I know that the commissioners and the 4-H Park Board had pursued different funding opportunities, and I believe the 4-H Park Board got some grant funding, which provided them the opportunity to get some new buildings in place. The county commissioners had also supported it with some additional funding. One of the things they looked at, you know, public works. Can we improve the drainage out there at the 4-H Park? And we'd identified some things could be done, and that was actually a project that John had administered, and I think it resulted in some real benefit. I hope so. Have we noticed that yet?

I'm sure it resulted in immediate benefit. Yeah, the storm drains out there were a bit piecemeal just over the years. We had a lot of farmers that did volunteer work type situations, installed what was out there. And over the years, they just grew so much that it was just inadequate. And it wasn't really designed, probably wasn't designed. It was just, this is what we need to put in place to make this happen. And it worked to some degree. But, you know, when you had the big rain, it made it very inconvenient to be there. So we went through and had an engineer design it to do an upgrade. They chose it. It's designed approximately to the 10-year storm event. So we've definitely made it a lot better for the drainage through there.

So when that was originally built, I don't know the answer, but was there any county involvement when you look back 60 or 70 years ago? Or would that all have been on them to...

We didn't even have planning and zoning then.

Yeah, so, like, you're fixing problems that were made by people that might not have known.

The only thing that was out there was probably a borrow pit for where they were digging to elevate the structures that they were building out there. I mean, there was some storm drain improvements over the years. I can't tell you exactly what years they did what in. But, I mean, it was a very interesting project out there because even the improvements had problems.

Well, that leads us into also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I kind of remember there were some unexpected challenges once you got into the project.

They're like, no, never. No challenge.

I was working on the other end. I was working with the 4-H board to promote stuff, and I kind of remember there being some challenges or some things you weren't expecting once you actually started digging in the ground.

So over the years, there were different activities out there. So there was electric wire. There were utilities running in different locations. You might have a water line that was abandoned or not abandoned or in use or plugged or something. So when we dug up basically the entire 4-H park, to replace pipes, there were issues. I mean, some of the issues were the newer part, and we replaced all that storm drain, or most of that storm drain anyway, they had a directional bore right through one of the storm drains. So you go out there and there was a utility line right through the middle of, I think it was a 36 inch pipe or something to that extent. There were, I mean, you didn't know, we knew where a lot of stuff was and we marked out a lot of it, but a lot of the lines and stuff, it was the contractor knew that he had to turn off all the water and then he had to turn it all back on to see if it was leaking anywhere, you know, when we went through. And then on top of that, the soils out there were miserable. So we ended up spending a tremendous amount of money just to be able to, we soil cemented the whole, Area that's under the concrete or under the asphalt just to to make it usable So it didn't destroy the the piping that we just replaced because it was a it was just really poor material out there and So yeah, well now that that projects finished what what can people expect from that area if it there's a big heavy, you know rain storm that comes through or flooding what What can people expect from the 4-h park now with the changes?

One of the most visible things, that main promenade, you know, the new asphalt pavement there looks very, very nice and it drains very well. So there's positive drainage throughout. A few years ago, if you were there and you had that August storm deluge coming through, you would be... trudging through major puddles everywhere and mud to get to your car. Now at this point with the improvements that have been made between the promenade and working its way to the people mover and all that, you can largely get to where you need to go without you know, going through mud. Now, you go off the beaten path, of course. There's still that as well. But the main traffic areas, not only do they look nice, but the drainage is substantially improved. And it was definitely a fun project because it was an opportunity, one of those unique relationships where... I believe, if memory serves me correct, the land's owned by the commissioners, but there's a long-term lease by the 4-H Park Board. Whatever the situation is, it was a partnership between the 4-H Park Board, the county commissioners, and Public Works, Parks. We all worked together to make a lot of improvements in terms of facilities, both on the ground, people see the new asphalt, but what they don't see are those storm drains that are now carrying the water away and they're not failing. I think we had a situation one afternoon, we were out there, the contractor had a piece of equipment that got stuck owing to a sinkhole that occurred right then and there owing to a failed storm drain, and he drove over it and... Do you remember that?

That was the trash company, for whatever reason. I mean, the dumpster had been in that place for years and never had any issues, but while we're going through this process, the trash truck backed up over a section of concrete and it just decided to fail at that time.

Oh, no.

So it was a no-no, but it was going to be replaced, so at least we... See? This is why we do this. It was a good time to have it done instead of having to fix it and then come back and replace it. So it worked out pretty well.

That's awesome. I mean, and it's good to kind of highlight that because I think everybody saw the improvements the last few years at the 4-H fair. They saw the new pavilions. They saw the pavement. They saw the handicap accessibility. But they didn't realize all that happened underneath the ground. Oh, yeah. In the middle of that project. So it's kind of cool to highlight that and to talk about that.

Now if it rains on Monday, they can still enjoy the fair on Tuesday.

Exactly.

When before it may have been rough sledding. That's right.

Oh my gosh. And that kind of transitions us over to floodplain. So we can talk a little bit about that. So that's like a really good example of how we maintain the water in that area. But across the county, we've got a huge risk of flooding. And it affects so many communities in so many different ways.

Yeah, so that brings us to floodplains and flood zones, which can be confusing. I get to work with you guys. I hear the term sometimes. I'm like, oh, what exactly does it mean? So what is a floodplain? Like, just as simple as that.

What are we talking about?

Yeah, the zones.

Well, so I think some of the things we're going to talk about today is there's really two components. There's floodplain. And then there's floodplain regulation. And the important thing to recognize, you know, here in Queen Anne's County, particularly on the island, low-lying areas, we're right there, sea level, low area, it is prone to the effects of flooding. And obviously, tidal flooding, you don't even have to have a storm to have nuisance flooding and things along those lines. And then you throw in a significant rain event or perhaps a hurricane, and it's all the more substantial. And so for us, in John's role as floodplain administrator, it's educating our residents about what it means to live in a floodplain, some of the things that are smart to do, and then some of the things that one is required to do. And there is a difference between the two. And so we administer the floodplain management regulation. It's actually largely federal regulation, but it's the National Flood Insurance Program. And a little background. A lot of people don't realize, while a lot of our local code is founded in local regulation and such, floodplain's a little bit different. Kind of like when you look at the banks, for example. You see FDIC insured up to $100,000. The idea being that back during the... during the Great Depression and you had, you know, runs on the bank and all that, people were afraid to invest money in banks because if a bank failed, they were out. And so that's where the federal government recognized the need and said, we're going to step in and guarantee this. But in order to do that, they had certain requirements that they imposed on the financial institutions, the banks, for it to make sense. So very similar with floodplain. I mean, ever since the earliest days of civilization, you know... man has kind of lived and done things close to water. It's an area where you can... you have access to the water you need to drink, to fish, and to... To travel. Commerce, travel, you know. And even today, you know, people love just the views and everything that can happen. So there's a natural desire that goes back for centuries on living in these areas. More and more today, we know that insurance is very important to all of us, whether it's insuring your vehicle, insuring your home. If there's a major event and you lose one of these things, you need to have insurance. The private insurance industry, for the longest time, would not insure things that are in a floodplain. The risk was too great. It didn't make sense for them. For many cases, years ago, there were folks who have properties that are in the floodplain that where they could not get insurance or if they did, it would be very unrealistic rates.

Oh, wow.

And that's where the National Flood Insurance Program came in. It was an opportunity to create a program whereby the federal government was willing to stand behind insurance policies. But of course, there's some give and take. So participation in the National Flood Insurance Program is voluntary. Not every community necessarily does it. Queen Anne's County, we've, like most communities across the nation, have decided to do it because what it does is it affords our residents the opportunity to have affordable flood insurance. If we did not participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, then either many properties would be uninsurable or it would be at very unrealistic rates. Now, the key is, in order for the federal government to prepare the National Flood Insurance Program, they took a lot of steps to make it work. They did flood insurance studies. They did... studies which determined, okay, what are kind of the chances of, you know, how subject is an area, how prone is it to flooding? So they looked at storm events, they looked at currents and things, and they prepared a set of maps which identified areas that are prone to flooding, and then they put forth certain minimum regulations saying, going forward, Any new building permits, any new development in the floodplain needs to be built to a certain standard, which, generally speaking, tends to be elevating. It's building a property or floodproofing it to minimize... The flood is going to happen, and when it does, it's minimizing the amount of damage and thereby the insurance costs associated with it. with that. So with Queen Anne's County, as a participating community, we've adopted an ordinance and regulations to ensure that new construction in a floodplain is built to be more resilient to floods. And really, it's a win-win. Yeah.

Now, you were talking a lot about new and taking care of it. There's probably people that bought their house here, and they don't know if they're in a floodplain. So how does that work? There's zones, right? And yeah, could you talk a little bit about that?

So I guess the... The easiest and simplest way would be to go online. The county has our property viewer. On our property viewer, if you go to the layers bar and expand it and go to the environmental tab, you can click the little button that says floodplain, and it will give you a color-coded flood map. And if you're in a blue or a red zone, that's the regulated flood zone. And it'll tell you that... the sayings on there. So you'll have an A or an AE or a V or VE. Limoire is a limited moderate wave action zone. There's different things that are on there that you can see on the maps. You can also go to mdfloodmaps.net and that's Maryland's. There's a little bit more detail to that. There's a few areas in the here in the county that are mapped A zones. Those are generally areas that get flooded with riverine-type things, and when a rain event happens, it's flooding. It's not a tidal. It's not normally associated with tidal. Now, you could have tidal impact, because we're so low around here, and we have tides everywhere. Sure.

Like, can it narrow, sort of? Like, how it floods every time it rains down at the narrows?

So that... Can be, but it's normally, our riverine systems are generally like Millington, Cloverfields. If you're on a large stream, there's some streams throughout the county, some ditches.

North County, there's some places up in North County.

A lot of stuff in North County. Most of the stuff down on Kenton Arrow is the primary flooding event is the tidal aspect of it. So you're more prone, and they've delegated it to, or FEMA's determined that this is the primary at the 1% chance flood event. So if it's riverine, it's more likely to have a large flood on a riverine type, so it's on a rain event. If it's coastal flooding, it's more likely to be from a tidal event. So the tide rises on the coastal and the rain falls on the riverine type situation. So that's the situation. And you also have FEMA's Map Service Center when you go there and get it. Like I said, the mdefloodmaps.net, that has a riverine study. So if you see an A zone that just says an A zone and you wanted to get more detail on that, you can talk to our office or something that way, or you can go online to do it. So if there's no number by your flood numbers online, you can... go that way. There's ways to find out how deep the water's supposed to be, right?

And then you have to get flood insurance if you're in those...

So if you have a mortgage right now, there is a requirement to have flood insurance if you have a federally backed mortgage. If you do not own or if you own it outright and it's paid cash or whatever that way, there's no requirement for it. We certainly would recommend it because it's certainly very likely that if you're in a flood zone that you're going to be flooded at some point in time.

And I think oftentimes people would be surprised to find, if they're not technically in the regulated floodplain, that the mortgage premium, or excuse me, the insurance premiums are actually, can be surprisingly not too bad. And that's the benefit of our being in the National Flood Insurance Program, that some of the flood insurance rates are not too bad. And that's something that people should look at.

And to just put a bow on your point, John, if you want to go online and you want to know how to use that tool, we actually made a video with Lee last year on how to go on and search and see where your land is. So go to QAC TV on YouTube and you can see how to use the property viewer and to search and see what area you're on. So we have a video on that.

We could link it in the comments.

Yeah, we can. Yep.

Yeah, that's great. And it's also available via the Public Works website. We have links on there. But also, I mean, John referenced a lot of the resources, these websites, and I think that's preferable for a lot of people. But one other thing is... Give us a call or come and visit us. I mean, that's what we're here for. You know, John, he's a certified floodplain manager and he is the administrator for all the floodplain in the county. Very knowledgeable. And so that's, I think, one of the best things about Queen Anne's County. We're very approachable. So, you know, you can visit us at the public works office and we'll be happy to go over those things. And that's what we're here for.

Yeah, it's really neat. We've gotten to interview most of the commissioners now in the podcast. And every time they say what makes their job the easiest is having guys like you both that work so well with the public and answer questions all the time. So, yeah, the commissioners see it and they know that, like, we're always willing to help out.

And a lot of the staff there, in addition to Lee and I, have been through FEMA training and stuff on floodplain requirements. So they've got a lot of knowledgeable people over there.

And they can point you in the right direction, get on the right website, and figure out if you're in a floodplain, if you need insurance, and how to find all that information. Both of you guys kind of mentioned the community rating system. Can you explain what that is?

So, you know, it talked about how when the National Flood Insurance Program came about, you know, the idea was... There was recognized a need for people to have access to affordable flood insurance, but that needed to be sustainable. So we adopted regulations. I keep wanting to say FEMA because it all falls under FEMA, but really the National Flood Insurance Program is administered by FEMA, but they come up with minimum standards. So the federal government established minimum standards by which new development should occur. And so in order for a community to enjoy the benefits of affordable insurance, they need to adopt floodplain regulation and administer those minimum standards. One of the things that people ask, you know, oftentimes when they go through the zoning process, there could be opportunities to apply for variants and go to a board of appeals, and oftentimes those are granted, and folks are surprised sometimes when floodplain, that isn't always so, and part of that reason is owing to it being a minimum standard. with fema so we need to hold those standards if we don't we potentially jeopardize the county's participation in the national fund insurance program but while there's a minimum standard that doesn't mean that we can't have higher standards we could be more restrictive and going back from years ago when we adopted our first floodplain management ordinance we'd established There's what's known as the base flood elevation. That's what the maps indicate in a 100-year event how high floodwaters are expected to be. The minimum FEMA standard is you build to or above that elevation. But communities could opt to build a little bit higher, and that would be freeboard, anything above that base flood elevation. And so the flood protection elevation is what you build to. So in Queen Anne's County, we have a two foot of freeboard requirement. So that's... That's more than the minimum standard. And it works very, very well for us. And I think John can get into a little bit why we've kept it where we have for some time. It actually goes back to some of our experience with previous storm events and everything. Because we have a few higher standards and they're reasonable higher standards. They work very well for our community. That's why we've maintained them. For communities that have higher standards, it affords, through the community rating system, an opportunity for... those communities with higher standards to to get a ranking and that ranking could reduce flood insurance premiums even further so for example i think uh we have was it about 2300 structures in in the flood plain in the regulated flood plain here in queen anne's county and uh when we made our application to participate in the community rain system based on some of the higher standards that we have would earn us an additional 10 percent in reductions for all property owners with flood insurance in in there and i think we calculated be about over like 1.5 million dollars worth of uh insurance savings countywide, which is substantial.

Yeah, we'll take it. Yeah, absolutely.

So that's something that we've made application to, and the unfortunate thing is with everything going on at the federal level of recently, it's a very long, slow process. So we're not sure at what point in time Queen Anne's County would have the opportunity to get into the community and rating system, but we're pursuing it because the standards that we have today would... open us up to having even better insurance premiums for our residents.

So going a little bit further, a lot of the standards that we have today have been taken into account from the entire time. The first flood ordinance was in 1984, and it had one foot of freeboard. The standard we have today is the two foot, but we have a minimum of seven now, and that minimum is basically the same flood elevation that they had in 1984. The 1984 maps were somewhat hand-drawn type situations. It was someone's best guess about where the flooding was going to occur. It wasn't always accurate. It wasn't extremely... It was pretty detailed, but it wasn't... We've come a long way. You couldn't necessarily know if I'm on this street that I'm going to get flooding correctly. And then they had to line up maps because they're paper maps. So if the house was at a corner here and the corner here and a corner here... You're not necessarily sure which corner lined up with where, and it just made things a little more difficult. Today, electronics has gotten a lot better, and we know pretty much where the flood zones are. Not 100% exact to say, hey, you're not gonna get flooded if you live here, because you could get flooded anywhere on the island or anywhere in Queen Anne's County. depending on the storm. But our higher standards have been in place for a very long time. We haven't added anything significant when we did the ordinance change in 2014. It's pretty much the same stuff. Some of the Standards changed based on FEMA recommendations, because when you change an ordinance, FEMA tells you you've got to do certain things. Region 3, for example, we had a requirement for 900 square feet for garages, which was a limit. Now it's 600 square feet. That was basically a direction from FEMA back at the time. So there's certain criteria that have to be there. But in the state, the state has a model ordinance, floodplain ordinance. It has a lot of higher standards than that. Ours is roughly based on their original model for the 2014s anyway.

And for Queen Anne's County, the most recent memory for many of us, although it's been several years now, Hurricane Isabel.

Oh, yeah, that's the big one.

Right? And that was primarily a tidal surge. And that was substantial for those that remember it. There was, you know, boats strewn across 5301, a lot of homes damaged. And one of the interesting things that came from that is it was considered a 100-year event. Okay. But the elevation that the floodwaters rose to was... just about that elevation that Queen Anne's County has as a flood protection elevation, a little bit below that. So that was a way of validating for us that the elevation, the seven that John's referring to, that we're requiring people build to, homes that were built subsequent to 1984 and were elevated to that elevation seven, flood protection elevation, were largely undamaged during isabel whereas a home perhaps right adjacent to it that's older that wasn't elevated yeah those homes sustained substantial damage so with the last update to our floodplain ordinance we maintain that flood protection elevation target because for us that's what works for queen anne's county so that was 2003. yep so does that mean we don't have to worry for

97 years now, this is 2100, is that the next one? It doesn't work like that, does it?

It doesn't quite work like that. And in fact, we refer to it as a 100-year storm, but that could be a little bit misleading. What it's actually, the technical definition is a 1% annual event. And what that means is a storm of a certain magnitude, a certain magnitude that we've identified is going to cause substantial damage there's a 1% chance of a storm of that magnitude happening any given year. So just because we have one one year, it doesn't mean that we can't have it the next year, because this year there's a 1% chance of it happening, which means you could have two or three, or you could have zero. Over time, it's kind of like a you know, flipping a penny for example, right flipping that coin You know, you may flip it four times and get five tails Flip it five times get five You may you may flip that coin numerous times get heads over and over but if you flip that coin say, you know a thousand times Averaging out, it ends up being about 50-50 heads or tails. Well, the same goes with that 100-year event is, you know, Over a very, very, very long term, it would average out to about every hundred years. But the important takeaway is that any given year, there is a chance. And 1% is small, but it's a very real chance of having significant flood damage.

Right. And before I take you down a road that we already said we didn't want to go down before the podcast even started. You know, things are always changing, obviously. Do we see the zones change a lot or do we see regulations changing moving forward? Or do you think things the way they are now are kind of the way they'll be for a little bit?

So the mapping happened once, like 34 years difference. So we don't expect the maps to change anything anytime soon. Regulations, because these regulations are in place to save insurance money, which federally backed insurance money, so their tax dollars, I can't imagine that they're going to change anything significant in that program. So you want to?

Yeah, I think, you know, we've seen over the last year or two there's been a lot of changes at the federal level under the federal administration. There's been a lot of changes. As John alluded, the National Fund Insurance Program, that is one. It was developed to fulfill a very significant need for... everyone in the nation. And so as a result, that program's not going away. We may see from time to time flood maps are updated. In fact, we do see that. Our maps have been up. So the first maps were in 84. We then had an update about 20 years, 30 years.

It was 2012 when the maps, the first review came back to do for the second set of maps. They remapped them in 2012 and we adopted them in 2014.

Oh, wow.

So it was quite a while And they're electronic now, whereas before they weren't, so if there was a significant event that they needed to determine the remapping, it's a lot faster as well, because we have one set of paper copies in the entire county, which before we used to have a bundle for each map, I guess. On every map, you'd have a sheet of paper, like a poster-sized paper, and it was certain streets, so you were guessing, you know, because there were no houses on it. It was just a line where the map was. Oh, wow. And a line where the street was. So the flood zone was one line, and the street was another line, and the shoreline was another line. And now, with aerial photography, imagery, and GIS technology, Situations we were pretty accurate and it's very easy to update. So that's good. But I'd like said I don't see anything significant There's been a few little changes and and they don't normally show up on our maps they just Do letters of map amendment or letters of map provision. Those are electronic documents that really are based on an individual lot versus a large area. But they certainly could do a large area too. But I don't expect them to happen anytime soon.

When I was just thinking, too, when you were talking about the level that the waters rose during Isabel, if you go down to Kent Narrows, for anyone that's listening and they're not sure and they want to see, I think it's, is it the crab deck or fisherman's that has it marked? So that was my first year with the county was Isabel. I had just finished training. I was working at DES, and I had just gotten off of training, and we had the hurricane happen. And so I remember... I remember. You were thrown right in. I was thrown right in. And I remember the boats that just kind of broke free and they were in the middle of the road or wherever and they were on fire and nobody could get to them. And they were like, well, it's in the water. It's just going to burn. But afterwards they marked on the restaurants where the water came up to. And yeah, I mean, I've never seen anything. I had never seen anything like that. I haven't since.

Yeah, and it's really, truly, it's not a question of if, but when we're going to see it again. We will see it again. And that's why... We don't envision that the National Fund Insurance Program and floodplain regulation is going to go away. And even if through some odd scenario it did, the risk will not go away. It is in everyone's best interest that if you live near the water, there's a lot of benefits that go with that. But there's challenges with that as well. And it's important to know one's risk and to prepare for it.

So is that kind of the storm? Is the big storm the thing that keeps you guys up at night? Is that the big worry, or are there other things that you guys worry about more, like the flooding from something failing? Because that might be more common, right?

The biggest thing that worries me is frozen sprinkler pipes flooding the public administrator's office. Don't worry, Todd, we got it covered.

That's happened before. And I'd have to say from just boots on the ground out there, we have so many, our area is so flat and so low that the flooding issues, I don't want to say they're nuisance per se, but that's By far, we get flood events all the time. Right. And you can go by the year. You know, you have a high tide. And, I mean, just recently, the tidal flooding that was going on down in the Narrows, it's amazing what, you know, one little event will bring up. Right. You just don't know what it is. So if you're in a low-lying area and you're building in a certain way and your backyard's marshy or mushy – There's a reason for that. I mean, the water's there. There's things that we have to do to attempt to mitigate. And if your house is being flooded because it's an old house, I mean, we'd really love to have it elevated. I mean, that's the answer in most cases is just to go higher.

Yeah.

I think that's the biggest takeaway we'd like people to have when it comes to floodplain management. I mean, the regulations really are, they are well-intended. And so, as I alluded, you know, there's a benefit to living near the water and there's drawbacks. And it's being aware of all those and whether one's property falls within the regulated flood zone, whether... Through owing to a mortgage, they do or don't have to have insurance. Right. It is wise that folks be educated, come in, determine, what is the status of my property? Am I in a regulated floodplain? Do I need to have insurance? And if the answer is no, I'm not in a regulated floodplain, then no, I don't need to have insurance. Does that mean one should not consider it?

And you say yes, you should consider it.

Absolutely. So one thing I haven't said here, on the flood insurance side of things, it's not one of those things that you think about all the time, but if you're waiting to get flood insurance until the event happens, FEMA has it regulated to where it takes 30 days to get flood insurance. So if you see the hurricane coming, you've already waited too long. You're too late. That's kind of an important thing to know. It's 30 days if you don't have an insurance policy. On top of that, your homeowner's insurance policy is not gonna cover your flood insurance claims. So if you get flooded, you need to be aware of that and you need to insure yourself correctly.

Even if you're not in a flood claim.

Yeah, yeah. If you're being flooded by a storm event and you're not in the flood zone and you don't have flood insurance, you're very likely to not have an insurance claim.

Wow. This was our gigantic PSA that hurricane season's around the corner. Get your flood insurance now.

June 1st.

Yeah. Can we switch gears a little bit and talk about wetland mitigation? First off, what is wetland mitigation? And we're going to kind of focus on the project at Tanner Farm here.

People have a lot of questions.

Yes, they do. But just on the base, before we get into that project, just what does wetland mitigation mean?

So it's the process by which we're going through. I'm going to read it. I wrote a note down here earlier for construction. You're compensating for something that's already been deconstructed or disturbed. So there's wetlands out there that were impacted by human beings at some point in time, and we're going to... Create or attempt to create something that we Disturbed so so if there were an acre or something like that of wetland disturbance from one subdivision or one Project and it disturbed a forested wetland. We are attempting to create a forested wetland in this case so so the Tanner Farm is where the Wetland Mitigation Project is, is primarily a, I'm going to try to do it right, it's a palustrian forested wetland, and it's a scrub, shrub, wetland which basically means most of the area is going to have trees that are 20 feet or higher which is what we want to have and the scrub shrub are 20 feet and lower most of those areas are going to be marshy not ponding areas to where we don't expect to see large volumes of water laying anywhere. We don't want... You might have a mud puddle for a certain amount of time, but you're not expecting to see an area where you're going to have a lot of aquatic activity. We don't want cattails and things that are emergent plants coming through those. So not quite like your shoreline things, but it's really... You're walking through the woods. It's really damp. You know you can't walk through there without getting really muddy. That's kind of where we're at. That's what we're trying to recreate.

Okay. Well, an important takeaway, too, is, you know, many of us, we recognize the value of forests. We talk a lot about the importance of rainforests and trees. And, you know, we just recently celebrated Earth Day, right? And we've identified the various parts of Earth and Mother Nature that are important to, you know, the health of our planets and everything. And wetlands are part of that equation. wetlands are not always best if you're looking to live somewhere because it's wet, right? We were just talking about flooding and everything. You know, wetlands often compete with the way that we'd like to live, but they are essential to healthy living on planet Earth. So Wetlands are very important in terms of the biodiversity and things that they bring to our planet. They have habitat, a lot of water quality, and things occur in these wetlands. So as a result, and this is nationwide, there's regulations which protect wetlands because they are vital to the environment. And generally speaking, now if... If one develops an area that has existing wetland, one needs to mitigate those impacts. So in Queen Anne's County years ago, a lot of development associated with Bay City and Cloverfields, areas that were historically wet, Those wetlands did provide a lot of environmental benefits. So as a result, the impact, those wetlands having gone away, need to be mitigated by the creation of new wetlands. And that was as... an obligation that the county administered. It's a lot easier to, if these individual lots, you may have a quarter of an acre impact, but it's not practical to create quarter acre wetlands everywhere. You really need a, you know... Combine it into one. Substantial. Yeah, large area. 10, 20 acre wetlands. That's the practical way of getting it done. So Queen Anne's County is assumed the, we've taken fees and things from these developments over time. And now we are constructing wetlands to replace wetlands that were impacted. So really restoring some of that biodiversity and all the environmental benefits on Kent Island for some of the areas that had been developed years ago. It's like cutting down a tree and planting a tree.

Yes.

Perfect. Yes. Bruce, you answered that a lot better.

I'm going to work for DPW now.

And so this is for Bay City and Cloverfields. So that's the thing I think that was the big question online when people started seeing this project come underway, and they read our press release and things online, and they were sure it was some of the newer developments that this was mitigating.

Yeah, there was like, I got the numbers, but it's close to 10 acres, over nine acres in Bay City, and like two and a quarter in Cloverfields, maybe a little more than that. There's other projects in the county, too. County projects could involve from ski, it could be county trails, it could be just a roads project or something, an upgrade. If you disturbed any wetlands over the years, there's been an obligation that the county has the obligations to MDE, and MDE issued the permit saying, you will restore X number of wetlands acres to do this project. And we're at a point now that MDE is saying, it's time to do this. You've banked a lot here. And we've tried. This is not the first time. We've went to Greenberg. There's a wetland site down there. We got some acreage out of that. But this is a lot of science, a lot of luck to get things to work the way Mother Nature does. Because, I mean, she's had millions of years to do what she's done on the wetland side of things. And we're trying to create a wetland that's taken millions of years to get in a year or five. So that it's it's not quite as easy as it sounds That was literally my next question is like it sounds easy.

Oh take a wetland plan a wetland, but no, no Yeah, so right now you've been doing a lot of the groundwork But the planning isn't gonna be till the fall, right?

So the way it's going is there's a herbaceous layer, and I don't know all the plants that are in it, but there's a wetland planting that's the grass-type things that are being planted, and I think most of those are going to be planted as they're working through this. The part that's done now, it's about a third of the project's done. has already been planted that way. And the best time to plant for the trees, which will be part of the forested wetland, you have to have trees, will be in the fall. So the contractor is going to wait until the fall to do those. So we expect most of the earthwork to be done mid-June, and then they'll come back in the fall to do the bane plantings on the trees. So it'll look a little different then, but they're still going to be pretty small versus, you know, it's going to take some years.

Now would this impact the area around like the other infrastructure the people the neighborhoods in the area? I know there's a short time where the the trail will be closed But is there any other impacts that people might see?

I would say a pretty positive impact from the standpoint of developing this natural area, preserving this land. But during the short term, yes, certain trail closures, things like that. We really want to make sure that people stay out of those areas because, as John alluded, It took Mother Nature centuries to establish wetlands. We're trying to accomplish it in a few years. And there's really three major components to a wetland. You need to have hydric soils, clays, things that will hold water. you need to have hydrology, you know, the water itself, and then you need to have wetland plants. So right now, the soils that exist out there on that former Tanner property, the soils are largely conducive. They're silty and clay. They're going to hold water. Some of the earthwork that's occurring out there is creating these pooling and ponding areas that are gonna hold that water. So now we've got... We've got land, and it's going to be wet, and we're introducing the plants. And so as these plants go in, it's very important that we protect that because it takes time for those plants to take hold. And so that's going to be very important. We're going to be posting the area, you know, stay out, and we hope that people will observe that until such time that the wetland can... get a hold.

Yeah. And when it's all done, imagine how much nicer it's going to be when you're on those paths. Yeah, it's going to be beautiful. Yeah, it will. Man, did you, so you both talked about wanting a career and you had talked about, you know, finding this when you were younger and wanting to be an engineer. Did you imagine all these things you would have to learn? Like, so you have to know about flood management, you have to know about mitigation, wetlands, what grows, what can in the areas. How crazy is it, the array of work that you guys do?

Oh yeah. You know, that's a good example. No, I did not imagine that at the time. I think I saw a little bit of it. I saw that there was some variety that the county engineer was doing, which is why I wanted to focus on engineering at the county level. But I would say, from my standpoint, that's one of the best parts about... working with the Department of Public Works at the county level is, you know, Queen Anne's County, we're large enough that we, you know, with Public Works, we deal with a lot of different things, but we're small enough that the staff we have needs to delve a little bit into all those things. Roads, bridges, wastewater, water, floodplains, stormwater. So for me, every day is different. I will come in and do one thing one day. And there's a lot of variety, and I like that variety.

So no typical day.

Oh, no.

No. It is amazing when you try to figure out what you're going to do because it amazes me every day I come in and I have a plan what I'm going to come in to do that day. And at the end of the day, I probably did not get that plan accomplished because something else occurred. And we are such a small area and you have to – move with the punches there you know it's just one of those things is somebody calls there's a complaint or lo and behold as a flood manager we do stormwater management as well it rains and and there's some flooding somewhere that somebody needs to address to have a discussion about or You know, a couple months later, you turn around and somebody's calling. I've had issues with my insurance. They're telling me this. How can you do this? And you have to go back through and figure things out to try to assist, you know, insurance claims. Not that we're really—insurance is kind of a standalone thing. We're really doing the regulations side of things. But it's intertwined at the federal level so much, and you just never know what you're going to end up with that day. I mean, I'd love to say it works fine every day. And most of the time, it does go pretty smooth. But it is interesting that you never know what the call is going to be.

Yeah, you've got to be ready for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys have very different paths to where you are now. And I'm not sure about education-wise, but if someone's listening or someone's watching and they're interested in joining us, DPW, whether it's here or somewhere else or being a part of an engineer group, what would you say to them? What education or what background should they have or should they aspire to gain?

That's a good question. I think just from John and I here, we're working on a lot of things together. We work... on a lot of similar things and a lot of very different things, but we have very different backgrounds. So I think I would say that first and foremost is having the passion and the interest. Being good with math and science helps, but being passionate about what it does. So my path, I got my undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Iowa State University. And knowing that I wanted to be a county engineer, I decided to pursue a master's degree in public administration. And many days, I find that the coursework on public policy and public administration is far more relevant to the work I do on a typical day than the engineering. On other days, it's different. But we have an internship program with the Department of Public Works. We've had some students volunteering at the high school level who'll come in and spend a couple weeks with us, and we try to have the opportunity where they can... I mentioned that variety. We'll have them spend a little time with the roads division, with the engineering division, and then the sanitary district, and so have an opportunity to see the various components of what we work with. And then we have college students who will participate in a paid internship, and it's a great opportunity to... get experience on the many facets of engineering at this level. And those are really great opportunities and encourage people to, if anyone is interested in engineering, to talk with us. We'd be happy to. share our experience tell a little bit about what we do and who knows there could be an internship opportunity and that doesn't mean that they need to be a county engineer but boy there's a lot of really neat things to experience by working with the department of public works and john i know your path was a little bit different but here we are doing very similar things yeah

Yeah, I went to school at Dell State as a biology education major. I minored in chemistry. And my first job out of college was working on the farms. So in Queen Anne's County, of course, I worked on Chino when it was called Chino years and years ago. Great, great opportunity to learn the area. I was familiar with the area. I grew up on the Chester River. I was in Delaware, but my parents had a boat at Ralph's Wharf for a while and then at Cuttersley. So I've spent most of my life over here to some degree or another. And it's a great place to work. The science, the biology, I like to argue with engineers about stuff. There's been very unique conversations in our office over the years or just in general about what things work and how they work. But yeah, engineering, I was kind of at the Soil Conservation District in Kent County, got a lot of background There was a lot of forced learning event. I was hired up there to do environmental education, and that was 1% of the job, and the other 99% was engineering. So it was, here, we want you to do this because no one else wants to, and now you've got to do all this other stuff. So that kind of got me in the door here because it was a great opportunity to come down here and work, and I've been here for... quite a while now, so, yeah.

Well, as John alluded, you know, what looks good on paper doesn't always equate to how it really works in the field, and that's where having that experience is so important, and one of the best parts, again, about being with the county is that, you know, we get to see things from start through completion, like the 4-H Park project was fabulous. I mean, here we are working right amongst our neighbors, people we know, and we're you know, improving the area that we take our kids to for the 4-H fair, and, you know, that's a very, really cool thing to be able to work on projects that have very real impact on, you know, even our own families and our neighbors.

people have said that when they came to this table that's like that's been everyone's response is how cool it is to see the community and that's pretty much been every employee's response is that you know they like to affect where they work and their neighbors and their friends and their family and it's very rewarding yeah so we got to learn a little bit about your education and i talked very briefly i introduced you about a little bit of the things you enjoy outside of work could we get into just maybe one or two of those little things

Oh, yeah, hobbies.

What I really need people to understand about you, Lee, is the theater you work at. Oh. Could you tell us about it? Because it is amazing.

How much time do we have? It might have to be a whole other podcast. Maybe just a brief delve into it. So my wife, Mary Beth, will tell you I have far too many hobbies. And maybe that's true, but I don't know that one can... You know, I talked about community and enjoying what we do with the kind. I like that variety, but being involved in the community. So, you know, I'm active with my son's, you know, scout troop and Little League and things like that. But the historic Everett Theater up in Middletown, just across the state line there, is 103 years old. And the really cool thing for those kids, Almost 50 of its over 100 years has been owned and run and managed by people in the community. And so years ago, I just started volunteering. The first time I walked in there, I was just blown away on how remarkably beautiful this theater was. Just a small town theater and just... Beautiful. The architecture and everything. And it's got some history behind it because Dead Poets Society was filmed partly in the theater. And it's just a really beautiful place. And I was so awestruck by it. They mentioned, oh, volunteer. I said, well, that's great. So I started volunteering to work in the box office. And yeah. Now here, you know, I've served on the board, but the best part about it is I run the film program. So the Everett has live stage productions, and it has visual arts, you know, like painting and everything, but shows movies. And so with other volunteers, we will—I work with all the major studios, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, and we— book films and we show most of them digitally and actually a few times a year we'll show show them with the theater's original 35 millimeter projectors from the from the 30s which is really really cool running miles worth of film through the projector and so i'm glad you asked about of course you gotta come visit i know everyone needs to visit around christmas time when you guys have the the most fun event of the year That's right. And I think, you know, Commissioner Moran, he came out and our county administrator this last year, and I know they had a good time, and we even make it snow inside the theaters. Oh, wow. Definitely got to come up for a visit there. Yeah. How about you, John?

We learned his deepest passion. Yeah. I know you like to hunt. I know you're an Eagles fan, but what's deep down there?

I love them. I mean, I do love the outdoors in general. Yeah. Just enjoy. I've been spending a lot of time playing with drones, a lot of time just riding four-wheelers, motorcycles, anything you can do outside. And hunting is definitely by far one of my biggest passions. I take off every deer season just to attempt to take off every deer season anyway. Yeah. Um, it's just, it's just, I just love to be out in nature. It's, it's nothing, it has nothing to do with the, um, the, the, the kill or something. It's more of the, I mean, last year I didn't even get anything. I don't think on deer season. I spent a lot of time just, you get up in the morning and, and the, the hour before dawn. You're listening to the birds. You're listening to the owls hooting, just watching the critters and stuff. I mean, it's real fun. This wetland project's been a fantastic example just because I like to go out there. Sure. So I can't wait to see a couple years down the road what it's going to be like. We met with some MDE representatives and some Corps of Engineer people the other day, walked this site, and their passion is just crazy on the outdoors. They're out there picking up little critters. And when I say little critters, they're digging for insects and stuff like that. Okay. And identifying stuff. And I was like, well, I haven't done that since I was in school, but that was a pretty interesting thing. It's a passion when you get out and enjoy just being outside.

I tell you, John, we just bought a new drone last week. All right. And you get to wear goggles, and you fly like you're in the drone. Oh, wow. So you can pile around. So we should take it out. We should. To that area, and we'll fly around the wetlands and see what it looks like. We could. There we go. Then we can make a video for him.

That would be fun.

But yeah, we have to learn how to fly it first, though. Let's do that.

We'll learn that first. Well, if there's one thing that either one of you want anyone to take away from this conversation, what would it be? Just one major kind of theme from today.

Well, I'll go. I mean, if you're in a flood zone, you need to know your risks. Please, if you're purchasing a property in Queen Anne's County, make sure you're checking into what zone you're in. You could call the county to look at things. Just... It's very, very important to understand what you're purchasing into ahead of time. It's a great county to live in. Every place has its problematic conditions, and you just have to look into these things and make sure that you're doing your due diligence and know your risk when you're living here.

I'll say, and when you have a question, don't hesitate to ask. Come visit us, call us. At Public Works, we take great pride in answering the phone as much as we can, and we're there. And so this is what we're here for, is to serve our neighbors and the community. So definitely any of the things that we've talked about today or other things, you know, and the services that county provides, don't hesitate to pick up the phone and come visit us. We're here to help. Yeah, very cool.

That's awesome. Did you guys have fun today? Oh, tons of fun.

Definitely.

It was great. Yeah, better than you thought?

It was definitely different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I've got a question for you then. Uh-oh. Thank you. The mugs are great. You get the mug. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold them up for the camera. See? Look at that. Yep. So what is the coffee that we're drinking today? Is it Folgers?

That's an excellent question. It's Open Seas coffee that Beth had found for us.

Yes. They're local on Kent Island. So it's a roaster on Kent Island, I believe on Love Point Road.

Yes.

So you can't buy directly from them, but there's a couple of locations that sell it. So I went to, it's a place called Herbal Brew Bar in the business park on Kent Island. Really, really cool coffee shop and tea shop. And they have tea there, coffee, really, really nice little place.

Nice. So now you know where to check it out. If you're on the island or anywhere in Queens County, go check it out and get some good coffee, some good tea. But I want to thank you guys for joining us. I want to thank Chris for being in the booth and recording for us today, our producer. But I want to give a really special shout out that I haven't had a chance to do yet. And that's for Beth. Who does a lot of the production side of getting you guys ready. And she did all the communication with you both. And so we knew what the talking points would be. So thank you, Beth, for always being awesome at that. Yeah, of course. I'm just here to talk. That's all I do.

Thank you guys for joining us. And thank you for your service, John. I didn't realize you were in the military. So thank you for that. Thank you guys both for serving the county.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for having us today. We've enjoyed it.

Of course. And thank you for listening. And for everyone, if you want to learn more about flood mitigation and if you want to hear about the plans and all the amazing videos that we've got to make over the years, you can go to QACTV.com or you can go to QACTV on YouTube. You can follow us on Facebook. You can also follow Beth at the government page on Facebook where she posts all the amazing information we share, especially when it comes to things like the closures during projects and pictures of how the projects are going. So visit all of our social medias. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you for listening. And I consider this open agenda closed.

Lights on, mic check. What's happening with QAC next? Go behind the scenes with Bruce and Beth. The conversation shaping the county's future.

This is the open agenda.