Rain, Flooding Disrupt City Streets and Fairgrounds

NORTHAMPTON – Flooding in the city’s lowest lying areas forced the closing Monday morning of a few streets in the Meadows and along the Three County Fairgrounds, and required the pumping of the Barrett Street sewer line, officials said.

Almost 3.2 inches of rain fell on the city Sunday through 5 a.m. Monday, and on Monday morning the Connecticut River was pegged at 105.7 feet above sea level, according to George Brehm, superintendent of wastewater treatment for the city.

A real-time reading of the Connecticut River level at 12:45 p.m. Monday indicated a level of 107.04 inches above sea level. (To see the DPW’s real-time readings for levels of the Connecticut River and the Mill River at Clement Street, as well as for other weather-related measurements, click here.)

The Pump Station, Closed Roads and a Sewer Pipe Overflow

Stormwater runoff flowing into the old Mill River bed to the Hockanum Street pump station, Brehm said, had backed up enough into a holding field that his crews activated diesel engines to pump some of it into the Connecticut River. He said predictions of the Connecticut rising to about 107 feet above sea level tonight was not a major concern, but that the pumps would probably be cranked up again to force stormwater from the city into the river.

Meanwhile, the Department of Public Works moved Monday morning to close Cross Path Road, the Fair Street Extension and State Street at Stoddard Avenue, according to Public Works Director Edward “Ned” Huntley.

At the fairgrounds, where construction has begun on three new barns and some old horse stables have already been removed, flooding stopped some of the work as lakes of trapped stormwater formed on the eastern edge of the property. The flooding forced the closure of Crosspath Road along the edge of the fairgrounds.

Across Interstate 91, the DPW  also closed the Fair Street Extension, where Ward 3 City Councilor Angela Plassmann and a few other families live. Huntley said those homes were essentially landlocked, with no drivable route out.

“We got a lot of rain, to be sure,” Brehm said. But he described the rain and street flooding as nothing out of the ordinary, a yearly occurrence this time of year. And because much precipitation to the north along the Connecticut River watershed fell in the form of snow, he said, there was no threat of massive flooding here or elsewhere along the river.

On Barrett Street, however, the DPW’s sewer division dispatched Brendan Shea with hoses and pumps to a manhole where an unknown inflow of stormwater had infiltrated the sewer line, causing it to flood the street. Since early morning, Shea was pumping effluent from a sewer line on Barrett Street around the corner to a pipe on Carlon Drive, Huntley told Northampton Media.

Both manholes eventually deposit their flows into the King Street sewer line, and off to the wastewater treatment plant off Hockanum Road. Huntley said the pumping was a transfer from the lower-lying Barrett Street line to the higher and less inundated one on Carlon Drive.

Construction Progress at Fairgrounds, but Work Stalled for the Day

At the fairgrounds, Three County Fair Manager Bruce Shallcross told Northampton Media that much of the flooding along Crosspath Road and onto the eastern edge of the fairgrounds was coming from the overloaded drainage system for I-91, which was redirecting stormwater onto private land and city streets.

The rain, he said, was not interfering with construction of three new animal barns and the demolition of old horse stable along Crosspath Road. The work constitutes Phase One of the fairgrounds’ planned $42 million master plan to modernize and upgrade the facility. (To view the master plan, click here.)

But Shallcross said work on building the three new barns had halted today because high winds made it too dangerous to raise trusses for the buildings. “It’s too muddy and it’s too windy today,” he said.

Overall, however, “We’re proceeding along (and) we’re making good strides,” said Shallcross. He predicted the work would be done by June, a month before the all-important New England Morgan Horse Show pulls into the city.

While several old horse stall structures have already been removed, Shallcross said about 210 old stalls would remain and, combined with cow barns closed to Route 9, would be adequate for the early show season, which starts in April.

Old Flooding Concerns and a New Study on the Way

Flooding at the fairgrounds and in the surrounding neighborhoods was a major concern expressed by fair neighbors in public hearings held last fall and in December when fair officials applied for and were granted an expanded Phase One project.

After former city councilor and fair neighbor Maria Tymoczko filed an appeal to the state Department of Environmental Protection for a comprehensive review of the expanded plans, Shallcross issued a press release announcing scaled-back plans to include only removing old horse stalls and building three new barns for Phase One. He also applied to have the expanded permit revoked, which the city’s Conservation Commission promptly did. (See “Fairgrounds Project Stalled.”)

Fairgrounds neighbors have long cited the failure of the Williams Street Brook, an underground piping system that is supposed to channel stormwater from a large watershed area, including the fairgrounds, into the old Mill River bed and to the pump station on Hockanum Road.

The Board of Public Works has commissioned a new engineering study on stormwater drainage in that area of the city. The report, which was due to be completed earlier this year, remains under review by city engineers.

© 2011 Northampton Media

David Reid can be reached at dreid@northamptonmedia.com