Norwalk tackles its flooding problem
NORWALK — Help is on the way for Norwalk neighborhoods that have been subject to flooding over the years.
The Norwalk Common Council on Tuesday evening authorized the city’s Water Pollution Control Authority to amend its existing contract with CH2M Hill Engineers Inc., at a cost of $150,000, to assist with storm-water system design.
“We’ve had some unbelievable rains over the last few weeks, and it overwhelmed our system on one particular rain,” said Councilman John E. Igneri, a District E Democrat who chairs the council’s Public Works Committee. “We’ve had sewer covers pop and so forth, so we need to look into this, and here is an engineer that we’ve been working with with the WPCA who’s proven and we can quickly get him to work to look at some of the storm-service engineering problem we have.”
Council President John Kydes, a District C Democrat, said the city has seen a lot of rain and flooding recently. He described the additional engineering services as a “good first step” to address the problem.
“We’re living in a world now where you’ve got 200year storms happening on a regular basis, and we need to do something to resolve the flooding issues that we have around town,” Kydes said. “And I think this also sheds light on those areas in town that flood even without this tremendous amount of rain.”
About a dozen people from the Wolfpit neighborhood near Friendly Pond — one area that has routinely experienced flooding — attended the council meeting at City Hall and spoke afterward with Chris Torre, superintendent of operations at the Norwalk Department of Public Works.
“We will start putting together with the consultant bid documents to get some work on identifying drainage issues,” Torre said. “We’re going to study the hydraulics, we’re going to look at storm-water runoff.”
On June 28, Sept. 25 and Oct. 2, Norwalk and the surrounding region experienced significant amounts of rainfall, resulting in localized and widespread flooding of public and personal property, wrote public works department Principal Engineer Lisa Burns in a memorandum to the council. “The City of Norwalk is systematically examining all flooding complaints to determine if additional maintenance is required; drainage systems need to be redesigned; watercourse dredging is needed; or if the incident was a ‘super event,’ force majeure,” Burns wrote. “In parallel paths, the City is doing in-house investigation and cleaning, preparing bid documents for dredging (anticipated for Common Council action in November 2018), and retaining an engineering firm to assist with stormwater system design.”
The most expedient way to retain such engineering services, Burns continued, is to amend the October 2015 contract between the WPCA and CH2M Engineers — operator of Norwalk’s wastewater treatment plant — to include services related to the city’s storm-water system.
“This includes capacity evaluations, hydraulic analysis, and design services,” Burns wrote. “This $150,000 can be used to begin addressing the most critical stormwater system issues and is funded out of existing Stormwater Management Plan capital accounts.”