ANNAPOLIS, MD - More than five years after the City Dock Action Committee (CDAC) first convened nearly 100 members of the community to find a solution to ongoing flooding at historic City Dock, a legal challenge has been filed in Circuit Court, by a nameless group of individuals, aimed at halting work that could benefit dozens of downtown businesses regularly inundated with floodwaters. The year 2024 has brought worsening flooding to City Dock, with both more frequent and more intense flooding events, including two State of Emergency declarations and two “top ten” record-breaking inundations. Annapolis is currently on track for 120 flooding events this year, breaking the record set in 2019.
“Our downtown businesses can’t afford to wait,” said Mayor Gavin Buckley. “To be clear, I am confident our team has gone above and beyond to be transparent, to provide opportunities for public participation, and to follow the City Code in development and approvals of the City Dock resiliency project. Due to the anonymous nature of this filing, it is impossible to understand the motivation behind the lawsuit thereby blunting our ability to adequately defend against it. What the lawsuit will bring is costly delays, degradation of historic structures, and, inevitably, more downtown flooding.”
In March of 2024, after approval by the Annapolis Planning Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission backed the site plan for the resiliency work to be conducted at City Dock, including a raised park, flood gates, and realignment of the storm drains. The final site plan was developed after hundreds of community and stakeholder meetings, including City Dock Action Committee public outreach meetings, stakeholder, business, and community briefings, and public work sessions with the Annapolis City Council, Planning Commission and Historic Preservation Commission.
After more than five years of intense and public deliberation, the Annapolis community has clearly spoken. The urgency of recent flooding events at City Dock demands immediate action to preserve, protect, and revitalize downtown. It would be a tragedy if urgently-needed resiliency work was delayed by anonymous and spurious legal action.
