In the backyard of Janice and Tony Bruno, there’s a beige gravel path leading past a babbling fountain to a cozy patio. Butterfly pavers line a grassy garden and bird habitat, which gives way to a steep, well-landscaped bank.
The Brunos worked to make their small backyard beautiful. The only problem is you can’t see it.
These days, the Brunos’ Annapolis backyard resembles a beach more than a garden. A thick layer of muddy sand obscures their entire patio, “like a volcano erupted from the ground up,” Janice Bruno said. Water has been running through their hill, bringing with it sand and debris due to erosion they blame on the development above their property, a private enclave of new townhomes called Primrose Hill. With every rain, it gets worse, they said.
The Brunos are part of a group of neighbors tying two years of problems to the project. The city has not issued a stop work order, but has asked Elm Street Development to stall construction on the last townhouses until completing a number of fixes to neighboring properties. Elm Street Development Vice President Mike Burlbaugh maintains the development is not causing ongoing neighborhood issues.
“We are going above and beyond what could reasonably be construed as our responsibility,” Burlbaugh said. “We’re doing off-site work to improve the neighborhood and fix preexisting conditions as a gesture of good will.”
Before construction started, the city inspected the Brunos’ hill and found some stability issues. The water barreling down a corner of their yard isn’t coming from the Primrose development, said Annapolis stormwater engineer Matt Waters, but earlier stormwater control failures onsite exacerbated their erosion problems.
Last year, during a particularly cold and rainy winter, several sediment and erosion controls failed onsite, where Elm Street will put in six single-family homes and 19 townhouses. Heavy storms overpowered temporary stormwater controls, sending sediment-laden water into yards and eventually storm drains on Edelmar Drive. The city cited the project several times and issued a stop work order. Waters at the time called it “probably the most problematic site we have experienced.”
Since then, Elm Street has implemented permanent stormwater measures. After discovering workers laid the stormwater drainage pipes incorrectly, Elm Street fired its building contractor not just on the Primrose site, but across all its worksites. They installed redundancies throughout the stormwater system to prevent failures and avoid spillage if one drain gets blocked.
The developer also drove pipes into the perimeter of the property to check for underwater flow. Thus far, all the pipes but one have been dry, Burlbaugh said.
Burlbaugh said the developer has applied for permits to replace several retaining walls the city determined to have suffered as a result of the construction. Elm Street also has plans to restabilize the Brunos’ hill and improve their slope drain, he said. The company reimbursed another resident, Tracy McGranahan, for the cost of sealing her basement and replaced two of her trees. They installed sod in Chris Kamenoff’s backyard and will plant trees once the weather warms up. She said her problems have mostly stopped.
Stormwater flow offsite should be better than it was before with the new underground system, Burlbaugh said.
But past indiscretions have left neighbors wary of the future. They continue to live with the effects of last year’s rainy season and experience new problems they can’t explain.
“I just want them to do the right thing,” Janice Bruno said.
The Brunos have lingering issues beyond 6 inches of sand. After erosion controls failed last year and sent a stream of water into the Brunos’ backyard, the city required Elm Street to install a small inlet and drain to keep water from sluicing down the hill. But it was improperly stabilized and is still causing erosion issues around the slope, Waters said.
Janice Bruno worries she’ll wake up one day and find the hill collapsed on her house. She’s worried the damage to the hill has permanently devalued her property.
McGranahan, whose basement flooded twice after construction started, has noticed cracks in her foundation. She suspects her house might be shifting.
“What about the future?” she said. “Because at some point, they’re going to leave and the homeowners up there will be responsible for anything that happens. What guarantee do we have for the future that these problems won’t continue?”
