Two days ago, Baltimore Brew asked Johns Hopkins University about an issue that residents near the Homewood campus have complained about for weeks.

Coffee-brown, sediment-laden water was cascading down Wyman Park Drive from the construction site for the university’s SNF Agora building on the south side of campus – a hilly spot that sits above Stony Run.

Photos and videos from both Wednesday and Monday, when heavy rain pounded Baltimore, showed water bursting through a low black plastic mesh construction fence, streaming onto the sidewalk, and quickly overwhelming the stormwater mitigation structures installed there a decade ago.

Community members say that has been happening lately every time there’s an intense rainstorm.

Wondering why the promised response from the university’s spokesman took so long, we went to the spot today and discovered a possible reason for the hold-up:

Workers had spent hours today re-configuring it.

Instead of a single short section of “gutter buddy” filters, there is now an array of nearly a dozen of these synthetic filtering devices placed at the base of the hill, curved to capture water flowing toward the sidewalk. A longer black plastic mesh barrier has been added as well as a new section of chain link fence.

When we arrived about 2:45 p.m., a worker was pounding in the last of the metal and wooden stakes holding it all in place.

A worker assigned to try to correct the issue, spoke with The Brew Thursday morning. He pointed to the place [see video] where he said water had carved out a channel, surging under the gutter buddy that had been placed along the inside of the fence.

“The filtering action lets water freely flow through the recycled synthetic fibers, meanwhile, stopping sediment and debris,” according to a website for one such product. “Built-in overflows drain water quickly during extreme events to prevent ponding.”

Judging by the heavy overflows occurring regularly, the fence and filter approach implemented by Hopkins after neighborhood complaints certainly wasn’t working.

The Difference of a Day

“Real Risk” is to Stony Run

“Though the storm on Monday was the worst runoff we’ve experienced, we’re seeing flooding and sediment coming from the Agora site after every torrential rain now,” said Hillary Gonzalez, a community organizer who lives nearby.

As Gonzalez sees it, the runoff underscores an issue raised by critics of the even larger project Hopkins is planning on adjacent land at the intersection of Wyman Park Drive and Remington Avenue, the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute (DSAI).

• Opponents say Johns Hopkins DSAI building project does not need to cut down neighborhood trees (6/23/25)

• Worried residents reckon with Johns Hopkins’ plans for large AI research buildings (10/30/23)

Intended to keep the university on the cutting edge of research to explore the beneficial uses of (and societal concerns about) artificial intelligence, DSAI is conceived as a silo-busting, cross-disciplinary academic center with significant economic benefits for the city.

Construction is expected to generate close to 5,000 jobs in Baltimore with an estimated economic impact of over $505 million, Hopkins officials have said. To support the DSAI’s work, some “80 new affiliated faculty are to be recruited, in addition to 30 new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors with substantial cross-disciplinary expertise.”

Community members have raised concerns about the project, which is planned as two separate structures.

“DSAI poses a very real risk to Stony Run that we, as a community, do not feel is being taken seriously by either JHU or the city”  – Hilary Gonzalez.

A south building adjacent to the SNF Agora that will back up on the 3100 block of Remington Avenue will require the removal of mature oak trees along Remington Avenue for a construction entrance. That plan that has generated intense neighborhood opposition.

A north building (where the Early Learning Center is now located) would stand on the edge of the steeply sloped wooded parkland leading down to Stony Run, raising environmental concerns about the potential for erosion, runoff and pollution.

“DSAI will sit much closer to Stony Run than Agora does,” said Gonzalez, who created the bmoreagainstdsai Instagram page. “DSAI poses a very real risk to Stony Run that we, as a community, do not feel is being taken seriously by either JHU or the city.”

Millions of dollars have been spent to restore and protect the stream, a Chesapeake Bay tributary and the centerpiece of a forested strip of city-owned public parkland. But the increasingly high volume of runoff from climate change and upstream development has repeatedly undermined those projects.

In 2006, the city launched a Stony Run erosion control project using $10 million in city, state and federal funds. Residents complained as some 150 trees were cut down, bulldozers cleared land and rock walls were built in an effort to slow the water’s flow.

A few years later, powerful rain storms overwhelmed the system, and crews had to return and put the streamside boulders back in place. A few years after that, another set of rainstorms bashed the boulders out of line, this time costing $500,000 to repair.

Hopkins Responds

This afternoon Hopkins issued the following statement:

“Stormwater management for this area was designed years ago to handle much less rain than we have been getting in Baltimore more recently, and addressing that is in the plan for the DSAI project. Following this week’s storm, we have met with city inspectors and the construction team to review the mitigation measures in place and make any needed adjustments.

“We are working closely with our partners in city government to ensure development on JHU property complies with regulations governing stormwater management on our campus as well as surrounding public streets and walkways.”

The Agora project appears to be reaching later stages, with landscaping about to take place.

Hopkins did not address whether the runoff could have come from the DSAI project, which is only permitted so far for minor utility work.

The university has said that, when completed, the project will incorporate measures designed to increase stormwater management capacity beyond what exists today.

They had no comment on the runoff mitigation improvements made to the site today.