WESTFIELD – The heavy, and sustained, rainfall Friday caused street flooding in several areas and damaged at least one residential street where the earth was recently disturbed by construction.
City officials were assessing the damaged caused by the storm which dumped more than two inches of water, overwhelming storm water drainage systems.
Public Works Superintendent James Mulvenna said many of the locations where there were flooding problems Friday are subject to chronic flooding because of inadequate drainage.
“The underpass on East Mountain Road at the intersection of Route 20, and the intersection of Notre Dame and North Elm streets are among the worst of those chronic flooding locations,” Mulvenna said. “Both of those locations have shallow catch basins and drain slowly.”
The Notre Dame-North Elm Street drainage pipe, at the bottom of a steep hill, drains into Powdermill Brook and that drain pipe is compromised when the stream rises, Mulvenna said. The drainage pipe for East Mountain Road is also unable to handle the volume of storm water coming down the steep incline of the roadway. DPW crews were clearing those areas of sand and gravel deposited by the storm water, Mulvenna said.
“Canal Drive is the only road that was really badly damaged because of all of the water draining down from Pontoosic Road,” Mulvenna said. “We’re out there today doing repairs.”
Mulvenna said the storm water normally is carried by storm drains to the old canal, for which the subdivision street is named, but that limbs and debris caused blockage and backed up the storm water so that it ran down the pavement toward Shaker Road where the West Springfield water line was recently installed, disturbing the soil, which is more vulnerable to corrosion.
“The system couldn’t handle that amount of water, so it came down Canal Drive and found the low spot from the West Side construction,” Mulvenna said. “It’s never done this before. The heavy downpour lasted a good hour.”
City Engineer Mark Cressotti said that efforts to address storm water drainage problems are hampered by the lack of sufficient funding. Cressotti said that the storm water budget was reduced this year, “and now we have these problems, but don’t have the money to fix them.”
Cressotti said that there was storm water damage, due to inadequate drainage, on Llewellyn Drive and on the Columbia Greenway bicycle train in addition to the Canal Drive problem.
