New London to address Bank Street flooding issue
New London — The proposed solution for the chronic flooding issues plaguing Bank Street comes at a cost.
The City Council this week approved spending $932,800 for three new pumps to add to the Bank Street pumping station that will nearly quadruple the amount of water being drained from Bank Street and sent into Shaw’s Cove.
The council on Monday approved an emergency appropriation of half of the actual cost of the custom-made pumps, or $424,000, to be taken from the city’s capital reserve balance. The full cost of the project, which includes contingency funding and installation, will be borrowed by the city but paid for by the city’s Stormwater Authority.
The Stormwater Authority, formed in 2018, has its own source of revenue coming from fees based on the amount of impervious service on any given property. In its first year, the Stormwater Authority collected an estimated $1.2 million.
Joe Lanzafame, the director of public utilities and head of the stormwater authority, initially had requested $806,000 for two pumps but through negotiations was able to get a third at a fraction of the cost. The new pumps are 33 inches by 36 inches and will replace those installed at the pumping station in 1980 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Talking about recent storms that brought widespread flooding to the region, Lanzafame said, “the pumps were never designed to handle that kind of flow."
Water from more than 200 acres of the city drains into pipes on Bank Street, and from there is captured at the pumping station. The existing pumps have the capacity to pump 20,000 gallons of water a minute and drain an Olympic-sized swimming pool in about 30 minutes.
The capacity would increase to 96,000 gallons a minute with the new pumps.
Lanzafame said his department fields calls from property owners in the area nearly every time it rains to report flooding issues and property damage.
“We’ve expended every possible avenue to use the infrastructure we have to make it better. We’re at our limit now. We need to make some physical changes down there,” Lanzafame said.
Finance Director David McBride said the capital reserve fund will be reimbursed the $424,000 once the city goes out to bond. The city’s debt service will not be impacted, since the Stormwater Authority will begin paying back the money.
The pump manufacturer needed a 50 percent down payment to start building the pumps, which was the reason for the emergency request, Lanzafame said. He expects the pumps to be delivered in April and installation to start soon after.
City Councilor Martin Olsen, who agreed something needs to be done to address flooding, asked “are you offering a level of guarantee to the folks that live in this neighborhood that the problem is going to be corrected, or do you have your fingers crossed?”
Lanzafame said he remained confident and the effort was about “trying to extend our mechanical means to accommodate every major storm coming our way.” The Stormwater Authority also is looking to address flooding issues elsewhere in the city, such as the Cedar Grove and Connecticut Avenue area.
The new initiative comes on the heels of a more than $5 million project on Pequot Avenue that was in part designed to solve flooding issues near Greens Harbor Beach.
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