Michelle Turner Photo
Those splash-marred rides on Fournier Street during heavy rains may become a hazard of the past.
A city-dispatched crew (pictured) recently dug a “u” trench inches away from one of the road barriers on a stretch of Fournier, linking Beaver Hills to the Newhallville neighborhood behind Southern Connecticut State University, that regularly floods.
City Engineer Dick Miller said that’s the temporary first step toward a long-term solution.
The city acted after neighbors complained to newly elected Beaver Hills Alderwoman Claudette Robinson-Thorpe at a management team meeting last month. They said they’d been contending with the hazardous drives there for years.
Robinson-Thorpe said she hadn’t know about the problem. She agreed to contact Miller.
Miller said the city had been planning to dig a trench; it was waiting on a backhoe from the parks and recreation department.
The problem occurs because of rising water in Beaver Ponds, Miller said.
Beaver Ponds — and yes, according to the city’s parks and recreation website, it’s spelled with an “s” at the end —was originally grazing land. It was a series of small ponds where beavers gathered in large numbers and built dams until they overflowed. During the 1800s the property was divided among ten farmers who wanted the pond drained.
Over 100 years, the parks department continued to fill the land, creating DeGale Field (also known as Goffe Street Park) and moved northward, making ballfields, playgrounds, elevated walkways and swimming holes. In 1947, Bowen Field was created, and 10 years later, Hillhouse High School. In the 1990s, a new ballfield for Pop Warner Little League team was built.
The Beaver Ponds water drains into Wintergreen Brook, which in turn drains into the West River. And the West River empties into Long Island Sound.
Because Beaver Ponds takes on drainage from some sewers, storms cause the ponds to rise — and flow onto the left side of Fournier Street on the pond’s northwest end, sometimes turning into standing water of six to eight inches. And driving through the standing water isn’t easy. Since the water pools into one huge puddle, about two and a half feet across the road, drivers try to swerve around it. But that leads only to deeper water. On top of it all, you end up splashing the oncoming traffic with water, drenching your car in the puddle, and wondering if the undercarriage of the car is OK.
“The road needs to be built up a little bit ” said city Engineer Miller. “This [the trench] is a temporary solution.”
Miller said the problem was never brought to his attention before Robinson-Thorpe contacted him. A Beaver Hill neighbor present at the recent management team meeting insisted she and others talked to “someone” about it a year ago.
Dick Miller said the next step is filling the trench with a loose, gravel-like stone, so it will drain back into the ponds.
When will that get done? “That’s up to the Public Works Department,” Miller responded. “They will have to determine that. Eventually, it will have to be done [rebuilding of the road]. Hopefully [federal] money will come in, and one day we will work on the road, you know, getting it up to standard, and eliminate the flooding.”
Alderman Robinson-Thorpe put it this way: “It’s all in who you know..that’s what gets it done.”