Local
Brandywine flood plan advances with dam removal, but major work lacks funding and timeline
A dam near the Brandywine Museum of Art was removed this month, one early step in a watershed-wide flood plan. The broader effort has no schedule or confirmed funding as communities face growing risks from heavy rain and development.
A dam just upstream from the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford was dismantled earlier this month, but the removal is only one piece of a much larger plan to reduce flooding along the Brandywine Creek—and officials have no timetable or clear funding for the work ahead.
A 2025 study by the Brandywine Conservancy, the Chester County Water Resources Authority and the University of Delaware Water Resources Center examined 300 sites across a watershed that covers more than 20% of Chester County. Its recommendations include removing four dams, replacing 10 bridges and restoring floodplains. Two of the targeted dams, including the one near the museum, have now been removed.
The watershed is home to about 265,000 people and is projected to gain another 150,000 by the end of the century. It includes nearly 150 properties that have suffered repeated flood losses, as well as thousands of properties in areas designated as 100-year floodplains—where a flood of that scale has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
The museum itself is still adapting to the damage caused by Tropical Storm Ida in 2021. Floodwaters reached 21 feet there, four feet above the previous record crest. The conservancy has spent five years and $30 million flood-proofing the building, including closing about 12,000 square feet of public space on its lower levels and installing pumps and other protective equipment. Much of the funding came through state and federal disaster assistance.
Museum facilities acting director Matt Collins said systems had to be rerouted as the ground floor was reworked. Conservancy communications director Nicole Kindbeiter said the changes are intended to help the building withstand flooding like Ida’s.
The wider watershed faces a mix of development pressures and more intense rainfall. Along the Route 30 corridor, the study found, impervious surfaces such as roads and rooftops grew from 9% to as much as 15% of the land between 2001 and 2021, increasing runoff. The study also accounted for heavier precipitation as the planet warms. Conserved land may have helped limit Ida’s impacts, the report said, but it did not prevent severe damage.
The Brandywine has a long record of flooding. National Weather Service records show the museum site had flooded more than 65 times since 1912 by the time the museum opened in 1971. Ida surpassed the crest recorded during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 by four feet and was described as an event expected only about once in 800 years. In Downingtown, Ida was blamed for one death; Chester County’s emergency center handled more than 4,000 calls and more than 300 storm-related rescues in 10 hours.
Grant DeCosta, the conservancy’s director, said a proposed floodplain restoration project on conservancy-owned land across the creek from the museum is seeking funding. The broader plan has no timetable, he said, given the scale of the challenge. Gerald Kauffman, director of the University of Delaware Water Resources Center and a study coauthor, said financing will be a major factor, especially as federal funding declines.
The conservancy is also planning a 40,000-square-foot museum building as part of a $100 million expansion, scheduled to be ready in three years. The new building will sit on a hillside about 60 feet above the existing museum, which has endured floods for generations.