News

By Jane Smith

    Marine Way residents in Delray Beach are bracing for more seasonal flooding from the autumn king tides. Water can be knee-deep in some areas.
    The Delray Beach streets prone to flooding sit next to the Intracoastal Waterway. The king tides are predicted for 10 a.m. Oct. 7 and 10:50 a.m. Oct. 8, according to the Tides & Currents section of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.
    King tides is the nonscientific term for the highest tides of the year, according to the NOAA website. The king tides will occur again at 8:41 a.m. Nov. 5 and 9:32 a.m. Nov. 6.
    The public marina, south of Marine Way, also is prone to flooding, along with low spots on the barrier island, near Casuarina Road and the Intracoastal.  In Veterans Park, on the north side of Atlantic Avenue from Marine Way, Delray Beach is upgrading sea walls and replacing docks.
    The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency is paying for the work, which  includes raising the sea walls to 20 inches and making them level for the 400-foot length of public sea wall to the Atlantic Avenue bridge. That work should wrap up by the end of the year.
    Design work for the bridge’s south side will begin next year.
    Separately, a citywide study assessing the vulnerability of sea walls along the Intracoastal will start soon. Delray Beach has 19 miles of sea walls along the Intracoastal, and a small fraction are public, according to Jeffrey Needle, the city’s stormwater engineer.