By Thane Grauel
WESTPORT — The town is seeking approval to clear the lower stretches of Pussy Willow Brook to increase water flow and ease flooding during storms.
An application by Town Engineer Keith Wilberg was approved by the Flooding and Erosion Control Board on Wednesday, July 10, and will be heard by the Conservation Commission at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 17.
The town has applied for approvals on behalf of the property owner of 55 Greens Farms Road, 1735 Ashley LLC. The town has the permission of the complex’s owner to do the work, but will fund it.
Flooding problems along several seemingly sleepy brooks and creeks have been intensifying in recent decades as development has dramatically increased impervious surfaces and climate issues have led to more extreme weather events.
Depending on where you live, what looks like a trickling backyard brook on most days can become a raging river during a storm.
The Flood and Erosion Control Board, and the town, have held several meetings on the issues with the goal of prioritizing projects and looking at solutions.
‘It’s going to the be the start of something that will hopefully be an ongoing continuing maintenance program of several of the streams in town.’
town engineer keith wilberg
“This has been an ongoing effort over several years … the results of that are leading to the project I’m going to explain,” Wilberg told the flood board. “It’s going to the be the start of something that will hopefully be an ongoing continuing maintenance program of several of the streams in town.”
He said some streams need a whole lot of work, others, like Pussy Willow Brook, need less, “so the idea is to get some of the lower-hanging fruit, the easier ones, so to speak.”
Such projects work best, he said, when starting downstream and clearing a way upstream.
The plan is to clear mucky sediment that’s built up over the decades, and other blockages impeding the 2.4-mile waterway, which meanders through the Valley Road, Guyer Road and Lakeview Road neighborhoods before reaching the office complex, before ducking under Greens Farms Road, scooting along and then draining under Interstate 95 before emptying into the Sherwood Mill Pond and out into Long Island Sound.
“We used to use road sand for winter, which we no longer do,” Wilberg said. “A whole lot of road sand ended up washing off the streets, years’ worth, kind of clogging up the stream … as well as just natural debris that’s fallen into the stream.”
He said the project area covered about 1,350 feet of stream, which varies in width up to 30 feet.
‘When we get a hundred-year-flood it is going to be the same hundred-year flood elevations after this project as before. But if we do a cleaning project like this it may help tremendously when it comes to those small storms.’
Town engineer ted gill
“We’re going to be working from the downstream side to widen out a channel, probably somewhere on the order of 15 to 20 foot wide,” he said. “We don’t need to go 40 feet wide, certainly Conservation probably wouldn’t like that either. We’re going to their meeting next week and we’ll find out.”
“The idea is to open up a channel and pull some of that silt and sand, and get it out of the way, so that the stream again can flow much more clear than it is now,” Wilberg said.
Town Engineer Ted Gill gave some more background on the flooding issues and said in 1987 the town had proposed installing much wider channels and better structures.
“The neighbors in this neighborhood actually asked for that not to happen,” Gill said.
“At that time, they asked for more cleaning, and at that time the Engineering Department of the Department of Public Works at that time basically responded with ‘well, cleaning is a regular maintenance thing on the property owners, that’s not the town’s responsibility — you want us to install something that’s going to have a permanent, lasting impact, that’s what our goal is.”
“So here, we’re kind of changing our tune a little bit,” Gill said. “We understand, and we’re trying to make sure everybody understands, we are not solving flooding here. When we get a hundred-year-flood it is going to be the same hundred-year flood elevations after this project as before.”
“But,” Gill said, “if we do a cleaning project like this it may help tremendously when it comes to those small storms that we recall as nuisance flooding, when we get an inch or two inches of rain.”
Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 36 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.
Thank you, Ted Gill, the Flood & Erosion Control Board and others who are changing the tune from “drainage issues are too big and too expensive to fix” to “maintenance – it just might make a difference”.
Under the leadership of Ted Gill and the Flood & Erosion Control, with specific drainage improvement projects and a focus on stream maintenance (AT LAST!!!), for at least some of chronically impacted home owners there just might be a light at the end of the culvert.
I hope Ted Gill and the Board will add the lower Dead Man’n Brook area to the top of the “To Do” list for similar necessary and long overdue maintenance. I’m confident that the neighborhood organization know as W.R.A.G., founded to address drainage issues, will happily join in on the effort.
P.S. In the words of Margaret Mead — with a tip of the hat to Planning & Zoning Director Mary Young, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”