Last night’s flood panel turned out to be limited in focus to flooding in Cranbury. Apparently the Stonybrook creek floods, and its happening more often and with more devastating results. A situation not unfamiliar to residents throughout Norwalk. Is there any area in Norwalk not under siege by flooding? So State Senator Bob Duff got the DOT and the DEP to send representatives to discuss the recent Cranbury area flooding. On hand from the public official side from Norwalk were Mayor Moccia, State Rep Chris Perone and Common Council Member Joanne Romano and Director of DPW Hal Alvord. I didn’t get the names of the DEP or DOT representatives.

The main flooding incidents occurred last year in April 2006 and this year in March. Residences at 73 and 63 Cranbury road were pictured both before and during the flooding.

The DEP contends that the area is a flood plain, and so with the April 2006 storm, it was close to a 25 year flood based on the rain that fell within a 24 hour period, and therefor was supposed to flood. The residents in attendance were not happy to hear that assessment, and because the DEP guy was late, he did not hear about the more recent March flooding. COnsequently, he focused n issues that the neighbors could attempt to alleviate flooding that included damming farther up, or widening a couple of footbridges.

The DOT guy maintained that the DOT did not contribute to the silting of the creek and pond.

Hal Alvord jumped in to say that it’s his assessment that all the retention ponds and streams are silted in. He remarked that Silt exceeds banks of the creek, which he examined by walking from Field street to the Westport line.

According to DPW records, the last time dredging work has been done was 1962. Merritt parkway sanding, plus city streets sanding contributed to silting up the creek and pond.

A short discussion led to the conclusion that long term, the DEP would have to study what the problems were and what the negative influences were, this storm was supposed to have flooding. To get state money you have to show environmental impact, EPA EIE study, then logistic one, which would require Norwalk to fund some sort of flood mitigation study or plan. Alvord mentioned after the meeting that the study is not really needed if instead a company that specializes in silt removal was hired to assess how much silt needed to be removed.

A resident from Westport mentioned that Westport has had stream improvement program for the last 15 years cleaned out culverts and dredged streams. Westport replaced culverts. As an example, 19,000 cubic yards of silt in Nash’s pond was removed about 12 years ago.

According to the guy from DEP, construction sites are major contributor to silt problems, and that could be a contributing factor. He also mentioned that there exists a state regulation from the era of the ‘55 flood, that allows municipalities to create flood erosion control boards and that is how the transfer of funds from the state to the municipality for flood control issues. According to Diane Lauricella, Norwalk has one that has not met for many years. Westport has a board that meets monthly. The DEP can only fund a flood control project which has environmental impact.

The meeting concluded with some short term goals outlined that included; get rid of blockages in the streams, expand the bridges, get flood control board together.

After the meeting Alvord showed a picture of the Bouton street culvert that the DOT had failed to clean out. The trash in the culvert was contributing to the Bouton street flooding. Duff agreed to follow up on that.