Williamstown Officials Assess Flooding Damage
 Public Works Director Timothy Kaiser points out storm damage on Treadwell Hollow Road to Selectwoman Jane Allen. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Driving up Treadwell Hollow Road, or what's left of it anyway, Public Works Director Timothy Kaiser slows and points to several hundred pounds of twisted metal lying in an unnamed stream bed alongside the unpaved road.
"That piece of pipe doesn't belong there," Kaiser says.
It belongs at this trip's destination. It is supposed to be a culvert that allowed the road to cross the stream and continue to Peace Valley Farm.
But after Wednesday night's storm, that bridge and another like it farther upstream are gone.
"I've lived here my whole life, and I've never seen it like this," Kaiser says while conducting a tour Friday morning for members of the media and Selectwoman Jane Allen.
The washed-out culverts on Treadwell Hollow are two of the more dramatic examples of damage done by torrential rainstorms that hit the town on Wednesday evening, May 29. Although Williamstown was spared anything like the tornadoes that struck the nearby Capital District in New York, the town has pockets of storm damage that will keep Kaiser and his crews busy for weeks, he said on Friday.
On Friday morning, Petersburg Road resident Robin Kershaw was busy clearing up the extensive damage that occurred when a stream that normally runs behind her house overflowed its banks and ran through her front and back yards, temporarily turning the house into an island.
"We stood there [on the porch] freaking out and watched the garage moving toward us, which was scary," Kershaw said.
On Friday, Kershaw's property was muddy but drying out. The town had erected a berm to redirect the water back on its normal course. The garage and the concrete slab it sits on were rotated about 80 degrees from their original setting.
Kershaw said she and her son were home on Wednesday evening and at first didn't realize the storm raging outside had caused the stream to change direction.
"We heard something hit the porch, but we didn't know what," she said.
Soon, they understood just what was happening.
"My son said, 'Mom, I think we have a problem,' " Kershaw said.
The water in their front yard was as high as her shoulder, she said.
Kershaw said her family has lived in the house at the junction of Petersburg Road and Northwest Hill Road for seven years, but she had not seen anything like what she saw this week.
"We had no real flooding before," she said. "[Tropical Storm] Irene, the water came up to the banks."
At nearby Hopkins Forest, scientists measured the most intense rainfall on record, with .74 inches falling in 10 minutes and about 1.8 inches falling in 30 minutes.
Kaiser said he thinks the rain was even more intense up near Petersburg Pass, where the water flowed downhill toward the Treadwell Hollow culverts.
"The water blows [the culverts] out and carried them a half-mile downstream," Kaiser said while surveying the damage. "We're lucky this didn't happen all over town. It's very localized.
"It picked up riprap stones that weigh 3- or 4,000 pounds and moved them like marbles."
The first crossing you come to on Treadwell Hollow on the approach to Peace Valley Farm is now a 25-foot wide chasm. The second crossing — best reached only on foot through a narrow, grassy path — is now "six inches of hard-packed gravel being held up out of habit," Kaiser said.
"There's nothing structural underneath it to support it."
The town road was supported by metal pipes that were 103 inches wide by 71 inches tall, Kaiser said. They were designed to handle more than 300 cubic feet of water per second, the 25-year storm capacity.
In a really intense storm, it is expected that some water will overtop the culvert.
"This didn't overtop them," Kaiser said. "It blew them away."
Kaiser said he is in the process of finding larger replacement pipes to rebuild the road. Time is of the essence since the farm operation at the end of the road needs to use it to transport its product to market. Peace Valley Farm supplies, among other customers, Berkshire Medical Center, Williams College and the Williams Inn.
Kaiser said he does not have an estimate for the cost of reconstruction, but he knows the Treadwell Hollow project will be the most expensive repair the town is facing. The next biggest expense: purchasing all the fill needed to make smaller but necessary repairs.
"We'll be finding little (pockets of damage) for weeks," Kaiser said.
What you won't find — from this storm — is any new evacuation at the Spruces Mobile Home Park. The park was the site of "nuisance flooding," Kaiser said, but it did not have the same problems it did during Irene two years ago because the Hoosic River behind the park never rose to flood stage.
"We're lucky last week's storm and this storm didn't come back-to-back," Kaiser said.
Tags: flooding, roads, storm damage,
