U.S. Senator John Kerry, U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, State Representative Jen Benson, State Senator Jamie Eldridge, and a cast of local officials gathered at a meeting in Boxborough last week to help a Boxborough couple find their way to a dry basement.
Attendees listened as Ray Lyons, attorney for Boxborough residents Tom Hoch and Kathleen Zawicki, explained that rain waters flowing from Harvard’s hills into the Delaney Project—conservation land consisting of parcels straddling the towns of Boxborough, Harvard, and Stow—have been flooding Boxborough basements in the neighborhood of Old Harvard Road for at least the past 10 years. The problem became so bad last spring, he said, that the Boxborough Fire Department pumped 1 million gallons of water from the Hoch/Zawicki front yard and 250,000 gallons from their basement.
— U.S. Senator John Kerry
Other Boxborough neighbors attending the meeting added that their basements had flooded over the past 20 to 30 years and said that the problem “has gotten worse over the past 10 years.”
To navigate the legal swamp posed by jurisdictions in two towns (Harvard and Boxborough), two counties (Worcester and Middlesex), several state agencies (Department of Conservation and Recreation, Fish and Wildlife, and others) and several Federal agencies (US Department of Agriculture, Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and others) Lyons contacted Benson, who worked with Eldridge to enlist the help of Kerry and Tsongas in addressing the problem.
Kerry led the meeting of Old Harvard Road neighbors, selectmen, town administrators, town planners, Department of Public Works directors, fire chiefs from Harvard and Boxborough, and representatives from state and federal agencies, in exploring details of the problem and settling on first steps to a solution. As the conversation progressed, it appeared that the problem was caused by increasing drainage loads over the past 10 years on at least two culverts in Harvard and Boxborough and a dam on private property in Harvard, but there was no conclusion about how to solve the flooding problem.
Kerry summarized, saying, “We understand the plight of the people in Boxborough … one of the realities is that we had floods in Memphis, Tenn., and it wasn’t even a 100-year flood that flooded the Grand Ole Opry. The likelihood is that there will be more of this rather than less of this,” he said, adding, “We have to put together a long-term solution.”
Kerry pointed out, “We could easily have another spring like that,” referring to last spring’s destructive flooding,” and added, “No one wants to rush in here and place a culvert that causes the water to rise in another part of town.”
Kerry emphasized, “We’ve got to get this done … We should have a target of getting it done before next spring rather than have another round of damage. The first step is to know what we’re doing,” he said, and asked to “get a proper study done immediately.”
The senator asked federal and state agency representatives at the meeting for “funds that could be brought to bear on the on this emergency situation while the regulatory system takes its course.”
William Salomaa, director of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) Office of Dam Safety, one of the state agencies that manages the Delaney flood control project along with the Department of Fish and Game, and Bob Nadeau of FEMA agreed to take the lead in exploring state and federal funding to get started on solving the problem posed by potential floods in the spring of 2011.
Kerry said, “The next step is for us to convene within the MEMA (Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency) and DCR (Department of Conservation and Recreation) and get our staffs working for any available discretionary funding as well as the process for getting a quick analysis. The ball’s in our court.”
Kerry requested that the town administrators from Harvard and Boxborough put together a summary memo describing the problem from their perspectives. “Define for us the culvert issues,” he said. “Help us frame the problem, and put all the pieces together and state that ‘we are asking you to find state and/or federal resources in order to help us resolve this problem;’ sign this jointly and send a copy to the governor, Jen, and Jamie.”
Benson and Eldridge agreed to monitor the problem locally and provide communications on progress to a solution.
