Work on North Beach Road to Address Wetlands Design

By Margie Doyle

Tomorrow, October 24, the county Department of Public Works will begin construction of the storm drain across the Village Green in Eastsound to the “Mount Property Constructed Wetland”  a stormwater treatment project that has been ongoing for a number of years.

Clay Warner, Engineering Technician for the project, said the department found that the wetland as designed was not capable of treating all the water, and design modifications were made to connect the flow of water north of A Street through a flow splitting device that will cross into the storm drain at North Beach Road and run down North Beach into a stormwater structure north of the public restrooms on the east side of the Village Green.

The contractor estimates that there will be partial and at times full closure of North Beach Rd. in front of the park restrooms on Wednesday and possibly Thursday, October 25 as well.

Warner says on behalf of Public Works, “We appreciate the patience of the merchants that will be effected.”

The “Mount property” is a .9 acres parcel just to west of the Eastsound Village Green, a wooded wetland area. In 1999 a stormwater control study was conducted by Hart Pacific Engineering to evaluate the siting of stormwater dentention and treatment.

The 2005 Eastsound drainage plan, written by consulting firms and the county, incorporated all Eastsound potential stormwater projects in three systems:

1.    Piping from the Mount property south to Main Street,
2.    The Mount property itself
3.    Piping from Mount property to the north

The Mount Property Constructed Wetland was installed in 2011.