OAK ORCHARD, Del.- Oak Orchard residents are asking authorities to take action and provide solutions to help ease the area's flooding issues.

"When there was so much water, a car cut across and fell in the trench just last year," says Mike Masciandaro, who owns property in the neighborhood.

Masciandaro says trenches along Mercer Avenue collect too much trash and are not enough to deal with the flooding problem.

"We've had more problems from rainwater runoff because the drainage systems have deteriorated over the years. As a result we get standing water sitting on the roads," says Masciandaro.

State Rep. Ruth Briggs King, the Delaware Department of Transportation, and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, addressed drainage concerns in October of 2019 during a public forum. Since then, little progress has been made, according to Masciandaro and others who live in Oak Orachard.

"We haven't had any significant change in anything," says Rep. Briggs King. "We're not seeing any work on the ground. Certainly behind the scenes we understand that they're doing some work on the engineering that needs to go on for the different projects in the different phases."

In a estatement, DNREC explained that Mercer Avenue, Captains Grant, and Oak Meadows have all been identified as areas to improve. The agency says once it obtains necessary permits and landowner access agreements, projects will be put out to bid with publicly-available engineering plans.

DNREC says construction for Mercer Avenue and Captains Grant is 90% through the design phase. Oak Meadows is in the preliminary phase and final design plans are scheduled to come out by fall 2020.