The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
RIVER CLAIMING SEAWALL
City leaders not sure what caused 40-foot section to fall into water
MIDDLETOWN — Officials are seeking help from local engineers, and state and federal authorities to help fix the rapidly growing, massive section of the retaining wall that is tumbling into the Connecticut River at Harbor Park.
The estimated 40-foot section of brownstone bulkhead that is falling, which perhaps dates back as far as the Civil War era, has grown significantly in the past 24 hours, city leaders said Monday afternoon as the river swelled to high tide. Another portion is leaning into the river at the northern area of the park known as Lions Landing.
A police officer on routine patrol at the park discovered the seawall had slid into the water last week and alerted city leaders, who met to discuss the worsening issue. They are operating on the assumption the big rainstorm on July 17 exacerbated the problem.
The damage is about 75 feet from where Route 9 passes along the river. Erosion isn’t expected to creep toward the highway at this point, officials said.
“There’s a lot of history down there. We don’t want to lose that,” Middletown Fire and Emergency Management Chief Robert Kronenberger said of the massive blocks of varying sizes that comprise the 10-foot-deep retaining wall.
The brownstone blocks, which most likely came from the Portland quarries, aren’t jutting out of the river because the water near the coastline there is deep — about 20 feet.
“The good thing is, we know where the brownstone is — on the bottom of the river. After hundreds of years of erosion, it finally gave way,” Kronenberger added.
The city has alerted the Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Coast Guard and state Department of Transportation, and is taking estimates from several engineering firms to determine repair costs.
The Army Corps has jurisdictional responsibility over every navigable waterway in Connecticut, Deputy Director of Public Works Chris Holden said.
Presently, the damage is contained to Lions Landing, located north of the pedestrian tunnel. But the situation is in constant flux.
A cause has not been determined, Kronenberger said. In the meantime, metal fencing is in place, with orange webbing marking off the specific coastline affected. Already, public works crews have had to move back the safety barrier to prevent the curious from walking along that portion of the river.
“We don’t really know, but it’s probably something that’s been brewing much longer than (the additional rain that fell over the weekend into Monday.) The wall’s been there (for hundreds of ) years. We’ve seen plenty of rainstorms. Something else is going on,” Kronenberger said.
“With the rain that we got, I was crossing my fingers that there was no more undermining of the river,” the chief said. Much of Connecticut is forecast to see significant precipitation through Thursday.
“It’s not going to be cheap,” Director of Public Works William Russo said of the repairs. “We don’t know if it happened because of the log jam over the winter — if that started the process,” he added.
The January ice jam, which stretched from Middletown to East Haddam, caused erosion of the river and ice pileups, forcing massive chunks to plane onto one another.
Once a cost is determined, Russo said the city will be contacting FEMA and other agencies for grants. “We’ll be applying for everything,” he said.
The rest of the seawall, from Columbus Park to the gazebo just south of the tunnel, is reinforced by steel bulkheads, Holden said. Officials aren’t certain if the original brownstone is also underneath that area.
Back when Middletown was a thriving seaport centered around the West Indies trade, around the time of the American Revolution, more than a dozen wooden wharfs jutted out into the river from the North End area all along the riverfront, Middlesex County Historical Society Executive Director Deborah Shapiro said.
Green, Washington and College streets, as well as other roadways, reached all the way to the water, she said, looking at an 1825 map of the port. Rapallo Avenue wasn’t there at the time. That land was owned by Philip Mortimer, a wealthy rope maker whose mansion overlooked the river.
At the time, “boats came in and either on loaded or off loaded from boxcars that were on tracks right next to the river,” said the city’s retired development director Bill Kuehn.
“There were steamers up and down the river connecting Hartford with New York. It was a stopping-off place for shipping,” he added.
Years ago, Kuehn recalled hearing from an “old timer” about his childhood experiences growing up in the North End.
“When he was a kid, if several boxcars were lined up side by side, and open against the river, they would leap from one boxcar to the other, and then dive into the river to swim,” Kuehn said.
Because Middletown is situated on the bend of the river, the coastline is under constant pressure from the current, which contributes to erosion, Holden said.
Engineers will be surveying the damage and recommending temporary and permanent fixes, he added. Work in the coming weeks is expected to involve an investigation into what caused the failure and soil borings at least 30 to 40 feet down.
“It could involve divers going down and inspecting along the bottom of the wall,” Holden said.
“The water really has a place to go now that it’s open,” he said, adding that the exposed area is more likely to erode now the wall is compromised.