Flooding wallops Mystic, spares Yantic
Jan. 13—Harp and Hound owner Leo Roche late Saturday morning stood watching the water on Pearl Street recede from where it had lapped at the entrance to his pub just an hour before.
The traditional opening time of half past 11 o'clock had come and gone, with another 30 minutes until he expected the water to clear the sidewalk. Further down the street, two cars sat in various degrees of submersion where their owners had abandoned them.
"Maje, we won't be open for about a half hour," he called out as a familiar face rounded the corner from West Main Street. "The water was outside the door, you know?"
Maje Waldo, of nearby Allyn Street, assessed the Mystic River where it had overtaken Pearl Street. "It didn't go in, did it?"
Roche shook his head. "No, thank God."
Waldo's reply across the street was an echo: "Thank God!"
"Put on your Speedo," Roche advised the patron, whose reverberating laugh pealed along with the noon church bells tolling down the street.
The overnight storm arrived around midnight and dumped 1.71 inches of rain in Groton, according to data collected at the Groton-New London Airport. It was no longer coming down by the time Roche stood outside his pub watching the remnants of rain and river water.
Parents pushing babies in carriages along Route 1 and groups of friends walking with iced coffees and smartphones in their hands seemed oblivious to the message from Groton Town police that had gone out in the morning: "We expect conditions to worsen before they get better, so please allow emergency services to work and avoid the area."
The drenching high tide came in at 10:06 a.m., closing streets like Pearl and the parallel Gravel Street, which Roche described as perpetually flooded.
"Gravel Street is gone," he said, writing it off with a flick of his hand. "It's part of the river. There's nothing you can do about that. But here, it's a tidal thing."
He said a big part of the problem is water entering in reverse through storm drains designed to empty into the river.
The results of a climate study unveiled last week in a public forum at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on the same flooded street included ideas like installing rain gardens and putting in backflow preventers to keep the river from infiltrating through the storm drains.
The recommendations come as the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation warns cities and towns to prepare for up to 20 inches of sea level rise by 2050.
Roche said it's all related to global warming, "no doubt."
"It seems like every couple of weeks the street is flooded now," he said. But it hasn't been this bad since Superstorm Sandy deposited three feet of water on the pub floor.
He showed pictures of Saturday morning's high tide where it came up to the worn, painted sill of the front entrance.
"We didn't get flooded, but it was close," he said. "Let's put it that way."
On the Stonington side of the bridge, the sun could be seen over Mystic River Park while the nasal honk of a car alarm blared on Cottrell Street to warn everyone a parked Honda was up to its undercarriage in water.
By 1:30 p.m., Groton Town Police Deputy Chief Paul Gately said most roads were opening up. Other prominent flood locations included Route 1 at the intersection of South Road in the area of the Poquonnock River.
Not a dam thing
State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman James Fowler on Saturday said the Fitchville Pond Dam in Bozrah was holding despite two inches of rain overnight.
He said the condition of the dam was stable and it had "avoided further deterioration."
On Wednesday, a torrential storm raised the Yantic River to near-record levels. More than 500 homes and businesses downstream in Bozrah and Norwich were included in a mandatory evacuation order after a leak was detected in the dam. The order was lifted the same day.
This time around, data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows the river reached a high point of about 8.5 feet at 11:45 a.m. Saturday.
Flood stage is triggered at 9 feet.
Fowler said a contractor on Friday night completed construction of a temporary cofferdam using giant sandbags to relieve pressure on the dam. An engineering contractor remained on site to monitor the dam for any structural failure overnight.
No mandatory evacuations were ordered despite warnings from Norwich officials Friday night preparing residents for the possibility.
Fowler said contractors on Saturday were pumping out the area between the dam and the cofferdam at a rate of 3,100 gallons per minute.
By 6 p.m., he said it was no longer necessary to pump out the gap.
"Due to receding river levels, water has now been allowed to re-enter the void and it has not risen to the level of the leak," he said.
The water level continued to drop Saturday evening.
Chuck Lee, DEEP assistant director for dam safety, on Friday told state and local leaders that the emergency would be addressed before the state pursues enforcement action against dam owner Seymour Adelman of Seymour's Sand & Stone. He said the business failed to comply with regulations calling for dam inspections every two years and the creation of an emergency action plan for the dam.
