Consistently heavy rains on Sunday led to flooding of residences, road closures, overflowing ponds and rivers and property damage across New Canaan, where a National Weather Service-issued flood watch remains in effect through 2 a.m. Monday.
Turner Hill Road on Aug. 18, 2024. Mark Kerchoff photo
David Lovas, whose family has lived off of Marvin Ridge Road—behind Kiwanis Park and near the Fivemile River—said his home experienced five feet of flooding in the afternoon.
The Fivemile, which is usually about 10 to 15 feet across, expands to about 50 feet in width following the kind of heavy rain that pounded the town this weekend, he said.
“It now completely covers the land mass between us and the river, and then on the other side a stream and river completely cover that land mass so it becomes one large river where our house is surrounded on three sides by water,” Lovas said.
A residential property off of Marvin Ridge Road on Aug. 18, 2024. David Lovas photo
New Canaan’s emergency management director, Russ Kimes, at about 1:30 p.m. issued a town-wide communication urging residents to stay home and avoid standing water.
“Turn around, don’t drown,” Kimes said in a recorded message.
The city of Norwalk reported more than four inches of rain Sunday.
Lovas said similarly damaging flooding occurred amid a 2021 storm and that such weather events are happening with greater frequency, in his experience.
Mill Pond on Aug. 18, 2024. Theresa Clarke photo
“These are supposed to be 50-year floods or 30-year floods and now we’ve had two in three years,” Lovas said.
Lovas said he knows to turn off power breakers in the house once the water starts to come in, but that he and his neighbors for years have been seeking collaboration and more protection from the town.
Elm Street in New Canaan on Aug. 18, 2024. Mike Mauro photo
“The last time this happened to this extent, I had gone to speak to [then-First Selectman] Kevin Moynihan,” Lovas said. “Our standpoint, the neighbors’, is that there is nothing we can do to prevent this and stop this from getting into our homes, and the town remained ambivalent about it, just asking if we had flood insurance. We are not allowed to construct a wall or anything ourselves because of where the property is in relation to the river, so it’s just a massive nuisance.”
Call 911 with any emergencies, or 203-594-3500 for New Canaan Police non-emergencies.
I recorded 7-inches of rain over a 7-hour period this morning. It’s the highest rain total so far. I will update with the 24-hour total tomorrow.
I measured 8.5 inches of rain on Spring Water Lane as of 1:30 pm on Sunday. Another .5 inch overnight for a total of 9 inches.
UPDATE: 24-hour rain total was 7.41 inches from 7am yesterday. This is the highest total rainfall recorded over a 16-year period.
Our rain gauge showed 8 inches, to the top.
It is time we accept the fact that our town storm water drains are old, past their shelf life and use. Consider the amount of construction from the viewpoint of permeable surface that has been sealed over by new construction yet the construction still sheds the water falling on that space. Now, however, that quantity of water is primarily flowing out into the streets and quickly filling them. Those properties on the lowest ends then have back flow into basements, across lawns, roads and we, the taxpayers, have the resulting damage to both clean up and pay for. It seems we may be emphasizeing accessories like state of the art libraries and movie theaters rather keeping our infrastructure
Up to date
80% of the drainage is new over the past 20 years nothing you can do when you get that much rain in that amount of time
Valid point. Many of our culverts are too small for 4-inch storms and have overflowed even when unblocked by debris. The town should analyze putting wider culverts in problem areas such as North Wilton Rd at Briscoe Rd.
I agree with you Irene.
It’s overdevelopment Period – I have seen it time and time again in this town since I was a kid … Where 1 house use to be there are 2 or 3 now or the house was knocked down and rebuilt with a jumbo house built with barely a yard on the polt. If the town continues on this path the town is going to need to build some sort of expensive underground retention system for storm water during big storms or the property valves will fall because everyone will keep flooding. The current system is and has failed long ago.
Would it surprise you to know the town of new Canaan has a drainage policy. That policy means that you need to handle your drainage and water on your property if you are building or significantly upgrading. So any new house or building requires a reduction in drainage. So older homes with no drainage are a bigger threat to runoff and flooding.
You are overlooking absorption Arnold. In the last 30 years, we have replaced innumerable small footprint homes with large footprint homes. The absorption rate of your average property has been greatly reduced. An aerial view of South Avenue and its connecting streets shows that it’s mostly rooftops now. There is nowhere for the water to go other than to put pressure on the drainage system or overflow on to the streets.
The corner of Elm and Weed will be a problem in this regard. What you are proposing there will be 10x the footprint of the house that stood there and the runoff will be headed downhill to the neighbors, Kimberly Place and Acme.
You really need to understand how the town drainage regulations work. Since you brought up weed and elm —I can use that to explain how drainage works in New Canaan in 2024. There was no on site drainage for the old house, driveway, patios or pool house at weed and elm— zero Under the current regulations any new construction there needs to meet the current code. That code requires that a professional engineer design a drainage system using many systems that makes sure that zero water runs off the property. So in the case of old weed and elm there was Zero water detention previously installed. Under new construction based on town regulations—drainage would be 100 percent better.
In a rain event old construction has little to no absorption. So while roofs might have gotten larger around town —the drainage systems are much improved
The regulations are irrelevant to what Todd and I are referring to, which is ground absorption–lawns, fields, woods, trees, and other vegetation/plant material. This kind of absorption takes a lot of pressure off of any drainage system one could come up with. In and around town, we’ve lost a lot of green space through the years and have replaced it with rooftops, driveways, terraces, sidewalks, etc.