City Promises Fix For E. Side Flooding

Passengers waiting at this bus stop on Hemingway Street near the Bella Vista senior complex have to wade through six inches of water to get on the bus. Vehicles splash through the water, or sometimes skid on the ice.

Signs on both sides of Hemingway Creek indicate that officials know there’s a problem. Now they promise to fix it — by spring.

It’s been a problem for a long time — at least a year,” said Tracy Blanford after last week’s Quinnipiac East Management Team meeting, where the flooding issue was a hot topic. (Click here for a past story on the floods nearly two years ago.)

Blanford lives on Russell Street, which runs into Hemingway just before the bridge over the creek. She said that’s the easiest route to take to most places she drives. But she tries to avoid it if she can — - especially, she said, at high tide, when the rising creek has no place to go but onto the street , instead of flowing as it normally does into the nearby Quinnipiac River.

Ralph Nista (pictured at the management team meeting) is a school bus driver. He said he’s angry that the problem has persisted for so long. He doesn’t have a choice about which route to take as he picks up and drops off kids in the neighborhood. When the water freezes, he said, ​“It’s like a skating rink. The city is going to get sued,” he warned, if there should be an accident there.

On a visit to the site last week, the creek was behaving, staying well within its banks. It made for a lovely scene with the sun glinting off the water. But a woman waiting for the bus confirmed that it’s often unpleasant and even hazardous to stand on the sidewalk as vehicles fly by, sending out a spray of water as they pass on those days when the street is flooded.

Larry Smith, the assistant city engineer, was well aware of the problem when contacted for comment.

“We’re hell-bent to get that done,” he said. ​“We have it permitted through the DEP [state Department of Environmental Protection]. We’re getting bids now. We’ll know which contractor is doing the work in a few weeks, and then we’ll get the purchase orders out.” The work is budgeted at $50,000.

It will involve mucking out the creek. The creek has silted up with toxic runoff from city streets, including solvents and fertilizers. So the culvert through which the creek passes is 80 percent filled in, Smith explained, literally leaving the water nowhere to go but on the road. Workers will also clean the catch basins. And he confirmed Blanford’s suspicion that there is tidal influence on the creek affecting the degree of flooding.

The sediment will be stockpiled as low level hazardous waste and trucked to a landfill in Massachusetts, Smith said.

“If the weather cooperates, we will get it done by April 1,” he said, ​“before the spring rains.” He added that winter — with the exception of any major snowstorms — is actually a good time of year to do the work.

Told about the city’s plans, Ralph Nista said he’d waited decades for the city to fix another flooding problem near his home on Pawtucket Street, so heoffered a back-handed compliment. ​“If they even start working on it by April 1, it would be an accomplishment for the city, because they drag their feet on everything.”