The West Hartford Town Council recently approved the receipt of state funding to study local watershed areas prone to flooding.
WEST HARTFORD, CT — A state grant will help the town study some key waterways in the hopes of preventing future flooding locally as climate change fuels more intense rainstorms.
The West Hartford Town Council May 28 unanimously voted to authorize West Hartford Town Manager Rick Ledwith to accept and spend a $700,000 state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection grant to conduct such a study.
The cash will come from the state’s so-called “Climate Resilience Fund,” a project that gives money to municipalities to help them prepare for climate change impacts.
Ledwith said West Hartford, in coordination with nearby Hartford, was awarded the funding for the Kane and Kennedy Brook Flood Resilience Project after seeking the funds a year ago.
“The good news is we were awarded this grant, which the resolution will allow us to appropriate,” Ledwith said.
Specifically, he said, the funding will pay for a consultant to study brooks, culverts, and storm drain systems in the Kenendy Brook and Kane Brook watershed areas in town.
The goal, Ledwith said, is to analyze conditions and create plans to deal with drainage and flooding issues in those areas.
In general, he said, impacted roadways will be Farmington Avenue to the north, Flatbush Avenue to the south; Quaker Lane South to the west; and Prospect Avenue to the east.
The total project actually extends into Hartford along New Park Avenue, including surrounding neighborhoods there, Ledwith said.
As a result of the approval, $700,000 was added to the town’s 2023-24 capital projects budget for the initiative.
Council members easily supported the resolution, indicating a desire to address flooding concerns throughout West Hartford, not just in that area.
“As someone who has quite a lot of experience with flooding on my street, it makes me very happy to see that a part of town has received a grant to study and help figure out what we can do to alleviate some of the flooding in that part of town,” Councilperson Tiffani McGinnis said. “I hope there are future grants coming to look at the other parts of town as well.”
Councilperson Mary Fay said she has had residents express concerns about flooding.
“This is great news. Mr. Ledwith and I met a couple of weeks ago about a constituent’s problem with flooding. So this is good news that we will be able to convey,” Fay said. “So this is very good and it should be able to translate into an improvement for this area.”
Such funding has been a long time coming, according to Councilperson Carol Blanks.
“Absolutely this has been long overdue because we all hear the comments from our residents and then it’s a different thing when we experience it on our street or we hear the complaints,” she said.
“And we know throughout the years that we have these aging infrastructures and, a lot of times, for whatever reason, funds aren’t available or we’re short-staffed. So it kind of gets pushed back further out and further out and further out.”
Said West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor: “This was something that has been in the process for a long time and we appreciate DEEP’s support in all of this. We’re not alone on these issues.”
