Posted on December 22, 2021
GREENWICH — A major construction project could be coming to the Greenwich/Port Chester border in an effort to mitigate the possibility of flooding.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented a $35 million plan to replace the two bridges along Route 1 into Port Chester, N.Y., to improve water flow in the Byram River.
“Our analysis showed that the Route 1 bridges as they are currently configured, with large central abutments and low roadway profiles, constrict the river at that point,” Karen Baumert, who is working as plan formulator on the project, said at the meeting Monday night. “That creates a bottleneck … because the abutments catch debris, they catch sediment and they restrict the flow of water.”
The area near the river was hit hard by flooding, particularly in Pemberwick, after Hurricane Ida this past summer.
The cost of the project covers $5 million for continued design work and $30 million for the bridge replacement. Greenwich and the federal government would pay about half the cost of each bridge replacement, although since the bridge goes into Port Chester, the town may end up splitting its end of the bill with New York, officials said.
Nothing has been finalized, but officials were optimistic about the project.
“We have had initial conversations with New York State and there has been positive feedback that there is going to be cooperation on sharing the funding of that 50 percent,” said James Michel, the town’s deputy commissioner of public works. “Exactly what those numbers are is still to be determined, but we’ve had those conversations and there is definitely a commitment to work with the town.”
The project has received authorization from the Army Corps and only lacks Congressional funding. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, said could be provided as a result of the recently passed federal infrastructure package and other emergency appropriations that have been set aside for resiliency measures.
“It’s not a done deal, but the project should be ready to start once we get the money committed to that project,” Himes said at the meeting.
“This is something that has been a known problem for a long time,” he said. “I’m happy to say for the first time in decades of knowing that it is a serious challenge, we have a plan.”
Approvals from Greenwich’s local government would also be necessary.
The construction, if approved, would take about two years to complete. Work would be done on one bridge at a time. And the bridges, which are currently one way, would be temporarily converted for two-way traffic during the construction.
More than 50 residents attended Monday’s meeting at Glenville School, with several residents pushing for the town to dredge the Byram River and nearby ponds. The condition of those bodies of water leads to flooding during storms, they said.
“If the ponds are shallow and the narrow strait (in the Byram River) and we get a lot of rain, it doesn’t take very long for all of that to just blow up,” town resident Carl Griffasi said. “Time and time again, this happens and those homes get trashed.”
Griffasi has been outspoken about the need for additional dredging and draining improvements. He has been circulating an online petition at www.pemberwickfloodpetition.com.
“Ida hit us pretty hard,” town resident JoAnne Carlucci said. “My daughter and granddaughter lost everything. You need to dredge the river. When I was a kid, there was so much water in there you could take a boat out. You could go ice skating. Now it’s all full.”
There will be some dredging done in the river with the bridge project, Baumert said. But just dredging the river would not do enough to lower the water surface elevation enough to be worth the cost of doing it as a solo project, she said.
Further dredging would likely have to be a town project, not involving the Army Corps, town officials said.
Residents also expressed frustration that flooding has become a long-term problem in the area. First Selectman Fred Camillo, who helped lead the meeting, said he has had floods in his home five times.
“This is not going to be settled tonight, tomorrow or next week,” Camillo said. “I’ve been talking to other first selectmen in Fairfield County and they’re having … problems with infrastructure that was built 80, 90 years ago. It’s a bigger picture — but in Pemberwick and Byram, we think there are things we can do with help on the federal level. We’re working on it.”
Town resident Matthew Tyson also raised concerns about the bridge project’s possible impact on traffic in the busy traffic circle at the border of Port Chester, particularly with redevelopment projects underway in the area.
Officials stressed that the bridge work, if it were done, would only mitigate potential flooding, not remove the risk entirely. The Army Corps explained that they chose this option after an analysis showed it was the most “economically justifiable.”
“It provides mitigation to future storms, but it does not solve all flood challenge problems,” Col. Matthew Luzzatto of the Army Corps of Engineers said. “We basically work out an analysis of what is the optimum balance of engineering solutions associated with cost necessary to provide that level of protection. No project will ever mitigate the risk of flooding completely.”
