Storm Water Task Force Will Meet This Saturday

The next meeting will be Saturday, February 1st at 4pm at the Ocracoke Community Center. 

Justin LeBlanc helped to organize the inaugural Storm Water Task Force meeting on January 16th. The following list of participants, goals, and objectives is from his notes:

• The following volunteers will serve formally on the Task Force:

-- Justin LeBlanc, OCBA -- Tom Payne, OAPB -- Patricia Piland, Ocracoke School --  Connie Leinbach, OCBA -- James Gaskill, Informed Citizen -- Robin Payne, Ocracoke Foundation -- Dave Frum, Informed Citizen -- Darlene Styron, Informed Citizen -- Rex O'Neil, OMCB -- Wayne Clark, OTB  

• We determined that this group will elect its Chairperson and Vice Chairperson at the next meeting.

• We determined the following objectives for the Task Force: 

-- Identifying current "Status" of stormwater management including existing infrastructure and authorities/responsibilities; -- Identifying all significant puddling problems in the village and prioritizing such; -- Identifying without bias ALL potential stormwater management solutions; -- Assessing all stormwater management solutions for feasibility, efficacy, sustainability, and viability; -- Ultimately recommending a stormwater management solution; securing broad community support for such, and working towards its effective implementation.  

• We identified 30 major puddling areas that were photo-documented during the January 14th rain event.  Jenny Scarborough offered to photograph these sites 3 days later to determine those that remained and therefore represent significant puddle problems.  Nonetheless, there was general consensus that the 5 worst puddling problems were:

-- Back Road at Secret Garden Gallery -- Old Beach Road at Sanddollar Road -- Silver Lake Drive and Creek Road Intersection -- Sunset Drive at Cabana Road -- Back Road (at Fig Tree Lane, between Mark's Path & Old Church Road, and near School).   

• We determined that at the next meeting we would review the current storm water management infrastructure existing on Ocracoke. Justin will seek input from Gene Balance and request that he provide a short presentation on the existing drainage system in conjunction with folks from the Ocracoke Mosquito Control Board.

• We invited participants to join a meeting with regional NCDOT officials on Friday, January 17th.  At that meeting we learned that NCDOT has issued a contract to resurface some of the secondary roads on Ocracoke before September 2014.  While none of those projects will specifically address storm water, the projects are expected to provide marginal improvements by improving permeability of the road shoulders where resurfaced.

• We also learned that in order for NCDOT to implement a comprehensive storm water management plan for Ocracoke that we will need to submit a formal proposal for such to NCDOT similar to what Wanchese recently submitted.  We will also need to engage our elected officials in Raleigh to secure the inclusion of Ocracoke Storm Water Management in the NCDOT budget.  I will be reaching out to folks in Wanchese to get a better understanding of what they pulled together.