While the Eastern Shore has been hit with four straight days of rainfall, yesterday afternoon things started getting pretty serious traffic wise. By mid day water from Middleneck Pond started overflowing onto the right hand north bound lane of Rt. 13, (first two pictures).
By mid evening emergency personnel from the City of Salisbury and State Highway closed off the right hand lane and ultimately closed Rt. 13 alltogether by Friday evening.
Many travelers became quite upset because of the way they chose to re-route everyone through a residential neighborhood. Some said it was a 4 mile detour. I personally did not take the detour so I can't be confident of that being a fact. However, they could have warned people much earlier, even as far back as business Rt. 50 and brought people around to the Bypass and back to Rt. 13.
Some wondered why they didn't detour people onto Northwood Drive. Well, Northwood Drive was also under water. What I have provided above is probably more detailed, (photo wise) than most other news sources.
The cause of the problem was the failure to maintain the ditches and pipes. The main blockage was just below the railroad tracks near the Knights of Columbus on Emerson Drive. The pipes that go underneath the R/R Tracks were completely blocked off and they could not find proper equipment to reach down that far and through an additional 10 feet of water to remove the debris. So the City brought in pumps and is currently trying to pump some 6,000 gallons a minute over top of the R/R Tracks and back into the Johnson Lake area. So far they have seen about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch drop in the water level, so don't expect things to clear up any time soon.
Besides all the trash and debris, one of the biggest concerns right now is the structural integrity of Rt. 13. Once the water is removed, many are concerned there may be a huge sink hole and this could be a serious reality.
I spoke to many local residents who said they had been complaining to the former Mayor Barrie Tilghman about the City keeping up these streams and clearing out the debris but they said that the former Mayor kept telling them it wasn't the City's responsibility. However, if you look at all the signs around the property the signs clearly say it is City property, Keep Out! No fishing is allowed and it is enforced by the City.
Because the City failed to maintain these ponds and streams, the photos above are the end result of yet another infrastructure problem in the City. Taxes continue to rise and we were subjected to many years of listening to Barrie Tilghman, Mike Dunn, Lynn Cathcart, Shanie Shields and Gary Comegys stating that "Growth Pays For Growth," this is yet another prime example of how full of sh!t these people were/are.
Money went to paying off questionable developer reimbursements instead of keeping up the infrastructure and now businesses may pay the most serious price should Rt. 13 get shut down. Other major funds went into a new $14,000,000.00 Fire Station, millions more into Fire Equipment, $84,000,000.00 went into a useless Waste Water Treatment Plant and the list just goes on and on. I was even informed today that there are huge poy holes on the brand new North East Collector Road!
Salisbury is a mess Folks. We have some new people in Office and quite frankly I doubt anyone is going to take the bull by the horns and face these major issues head on. Mind you, the Mayor that does do this will probably not last more than one term because they'll be freezing up every ounce of spending and hiring in order to slightly catch up to all of the screw ups Barie Tilghman left behind.
You don't, (with all due respect) hire a House Wife to run a multi million dollar City. There are major responsibilities in taking care of a City the size of Salisbury, most of which were ignored.
