Two weeks after a storm cause massive flooding in Pomfret, the town is trying to figure out how to better prepare for storms in the future.
The Town of Pomfret continues to clean-up after a July 17 storm. Several roads were impacted from flooding that the town has not seen in years.
“Usually, you have little washouts or you have to replace a pipe or something. Nothing ever like this," said Bob Lohr, director of public works for the town.
Taft Pond Road is undergoing about $100,000 in repairs. According to the first selectman, Maureen Nicholson, a brook across the street swelled its banks and caused substantial damage to the road.
"I don’t remember that ever happening, particularly on this road. We have never had flooding on this road," said Nicholson. “It came across the road, undercut the edge of the pavement and as soon as that started, it just continued on like a zipper down the road and opened it up."
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About 800 feet of Taft Pond Road was washed out by the storm. It was one of several roads impacted.
Nicholson said she is reaching out to various state leaders and organizations for funding to help with the damage.
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“We might be able to qualify for some emergency funding," said Nicholson.
She has been coordinating with other towns, including Ashford, that also sustained damage from the July 17 storm.
According to James O'Donnell, executive director of the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, because of climate change, we can expect more events like this across the state in the future.
“We need to be prepared for things that happened infrequently to be more common," said O'Donnell. “We can assess whether the infrastructure in the town is adequately designed. There will be some costs to upgrade things and people need to prepare for that.”
In Pomfret, those conversations are ongoing.
"We started thinking about that. We have several dams in town that we are going to have to take a look at because of their storage capacity. If we continue to get rains like this those dams wont' be able to hold that," said Nicholson.
