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H THE WEEK; Towns Seek Flood-Prevention Solutions

S1 Ray Baldwin has had it.

S2 The first selectman of Trumbull, he has seen the Pequonnock River flood dozens of homes and downtown three times in the last year -- most recently in the April 15 northeaster.

S3 ''Enough's enough -- we've got to give these people some relief,'' Mr. Baldwin said last week.
S4 ''We have to have some plan.
S5 You just can't sit around on your hands waiting for somebody else to act.''

S6 So even before the floodwaters receded, Mr. Baldwin dusted off and began revising an old proposal to build a retention dam across the Pequonnock where one existed in the first half of the 20th century.

S7 Other public officials around the state are showing similar determination, with a number of communities hit hard by the storm resurrecting old projects with renewed vigor.
S8 And in places where flood mitigation work was done, officials are using the storm as a test to determine whether they need to reassess.

S9 In East Haven, notorious for its coastal and river flooding, officials said that recent projects had left roads more passable than in past storms, though residents of one beach area complained that their homes were as flooded as ever.
S10 Others said the storm provided an incentive to go ahead with a project to raise several houses.

S11 In low-lying Danbury, Mayor Mark D. Boughton said drainage projects over the years had held the water better than in the past, but an area near Lake Kenosia flooded as badly this time as it did in 1999, when remnants of Hurricane Floyd produced the city's worst flooding in decades.

S12 The mayor said he sent a letter last month to the Army Corps of Engineers asking for action.

S13 He was not the only one.
S14 The regional planning office of the corps in Concord, Mass., reported a number of calls from communities and individuals in Connecticut looking for assistance.
S15 The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection also fielded similar calls, and Denise Ruzicka, the department's director of inland water resources, said the agency had programs designed to help communities navigate the tangle of federal and state programs that offer financial services and technical help for flood mitigation.

S16 ''We're a touch point, and you can bet we'll be doing a lot more of that this year,'' she said.

S17 But public works directors say flood projects can take years to wind through the various bureaucracies, a point not lost on the town of Woodbury, where permits and money for restoring the bank along a section of the Pomperaug River had languished for more than seven years.
S18 After some 40 feet of bank collapsed in last month's storm, threatening at least one home, approvals arrived within days.
S19 Work began a week later.

S20 One reason communities now see the need to revisit their flood plans is that population growth and intense development have changed how the landscape handles water.
S21 A recent analysis by the University of Connecticut's Center for Land Use Education and Research showed that from 1985 to 2002, the percentage of the state's surface that is impervious increased by 22 percent, much of it in coastal areas.

S22 That means more runoff and more flooding -- something Westport is all too familiar with.
S23 The town completed millions of dollars in flood mitigation work in the last 10 years, after a 1992 storm inundated it and a number of coastal communities.
S24 But there was still substantial flooding last month around beaches, the Saugatuck River and the many brooks and streams that flow through town.

S25 Westport officials attribute much of the flooding to a development spurt in the years after the town's most recent study of flood areas and drainage, done in the 1970s.
S26 Within days of the recent floods, town officials requested that the Flood and Erosion Control Board authorize a new study to determine how to redirect priorities.

S27 ''It's close to 30 years,'' said the town's public works director, Stephen J. Edwards.
S28 ''Some development patterns have challenged our projects.''

S29 Equally important, Mr. Edwards said, is the town's obligation to re-educate residents about how they can provide their own flood protection and their need to be responsible for private property and private roadways.
S30 ''There's definitely a renewed awareness of our vulnerability, of our susceptibility to these types of events,'' he said.
S31 ''Nothing makes it easier to sell a project than a catastrophe.''

S32 Which is what Ray Baldwin in Trumbull is counting on.
S33 Earlier efforts to rebuild the dam stalled when residents objected to the large body of water it would have created.
S34 His new plan calls for a retention dam that would regulate water flow rather than stop it.

S35 Henry R. DiJulio Jr., who lives on a tributary of the Pequonnock, said the degree of flooding Trumbull experienced last month hadn't happened in 35 years.
S36 Recently, he gave Mr. Baldwin a tour of his basement and showed him the damage from three feet of water.
S37 ''Ray, you've got to do something,'' he said.

S38 ''I'm working on it,'' Mr. Baldwin said.

S39 THE WEEK

