A park protects a downtown
Tom Walsh looked out his 28th-floor window and saw the big picture.
From his Park Tower Stamford home, Walsh noticed that the river running through the downtown was higher than he had ever seen, the result of heavy rains that Saturday, March 23.
But Walsh's position on the board of the Mill River Collaborative offered him a panoramic view that stretched wider than even his high-rise perch can offer. Thanks to a slide show he had seen just a few weeks earlier, he knew the park was providing the city a service beyond that of its carousel, skating rink and environmental education center. It was preventing the streets and buildings in the city's heart from flooding.
Walsh sent a photo to Mill River Collaborative President Nette Compton. Compton texted me Wednesday morning to “chat about a story idea.” Her timing was perfect. I was in the mood for a science lesson and was already planning to attend an event at Soundwaters that evening moderated by Stamford resident Ira Flatow, host of National Public Radio's popular “Science Friday” program, and featuring Compton and four other area experts discussing solutions to climate challenges. It was an enlightening event, but I couldn't resist accepting Compton's invitation to transform Mill River Park into a private classroom.
Compton sounds exactly like the daughter of a former New Haven science teacher, her voice pitching and ebbing like the tides as she enthuses
about the park's success story. She also knows to keep the message simple for science simpletons like me, so she summons the perfect three words to describe the park's magical properties during this month of punishing rainfall.
“It's a sponge.” Without it, water would have spilled into the streets. I mention how Stamford's downtown broke into an impression of a swimming pool during the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. I didn't have to tell Compton. She wrote a fifth grade report about the storm. The park is now a remedy for major weather events, which are (climate deniers be damned) becoming common.
“So, when the river overflows at a massive event, it has a means of draining back in,” Compton explains. “It was always intentional that the park would flood, and then recover … .”
She pauses after “recover” and waits a beat to add “quickly.”
Proof of that came when she brought her three kids to an Easter egg hunt in the park the next day. In Walsh's photo there is visible standing water between the banks of the river and the carousel. By Sunday it had drained back into the river.
“Nature does its job so well we don't know it's doing its job,” Compton says.
Of course, residents
would have noticed if streets and nearby buildings started flooding. Walsh knew this because his construction firm built the University of Connecticut campus across the street from his current residence (the building formerly known as Trump Parc). When Park Tower was built 15 years ago, a wall had to be added because it was in a flood zone.
Walsh's view out the window last weekend was informed by a decade of living there. The rise was quick, and water was crawling up trees. He reflexively thought about his son's home in Wilton flooding, but he knew the park would tend to downtown Stamford.
“There is no doubt in my mind that without the flood control that was created all the buildings along the river would have been in trouble,” Walsh says.
That would have created a much different view from the 28th floor.
As Compton and I walk around the park four days later, she points to people on the other side of the river and notes that the ground they are standing on was underwater that previous Saturday. Her zeal and metaphor bubble up again. “That was Saturday afternoon and it's already back to this. That's wild, right?” She pauses to let the lesson sink in. “So, it's a sponge.”
It took countless hours from volunteers and crews, guidance from the Army Corps of Engineers and raising millions of dollars to make this sponge work effectively. Other cities are paying attention to try to replicate the model. Too many residents in Connecticut communities have suffered heartbreaking loss due to a lack of municipal investment in flood control. To those towns, Compton offers the lesson that “concrete isn't your only option.”
Proof of Mill River's success can be seen in the way the mallards frolic in the channel's rapid waters with the fervor of kids hunting for faux eggs. It's audible when I play back our recorded interview and our voices are drowned out by robust flowing waters.
This is science, but there is also a deep history lesson here, a different big picture view.
Mill River Park endured neglect for generations until the recent renaissance. The original dam and gristmill were constructed in 1642. Water provided energy for simple machines, and industry was born in Stamford. A map from 1789 shows three mills in the area surrounding the nearby West Main Street Bridge.
That must have been a sight to behold. At least one person thought so. A traveler touring New England by carriage that autumn of 1789 took the time to marvel in his journal about the effect of the sunlight on the foaming waters around the mills, declaring it “one of the prettiest things of this kind.”
It was a “refreshing entrance to a village,” declared George Washington.
The Father of Our Country would surely be pleased to know that Mill River Park remains a picturesque entry point, while also serving as a silent guardian of its city.