Fallout from climate change in CT: Focus moves to inland towns that will be hit hard

The consequences of climate change are easy to understand along Connecticut’s coastline where the sea is now forecast to rise 20 inches by 2050.

But researchers at the University of Connecticut also are now turning their attention to inland Connecticut and places that are not anywhere near the coast or even a large waterway such as the Connecticut River.

Scientists at the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation are examining how more sudden, intense rainstorms are overwhelming decades-old drainage systems, leading to more frequent flooding.

“We’re seeing more of these high-intensity rain events, and then, the water is just coming down faster than it can drain away,” Mary Buchanan, a community resilience planner at CIRCA, said. “You don’t have to be anywhere near the coast to be experiencing climate change.”

CIRCA was formed in 2014 in a partnership with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to focus on Connecticut’s coastline in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Sandy, which slammed into the state in 2012, caused $350 million in damage in Connecticut, which included 3,000 homes, and exposed weaknesses in how well the state was prepared for extreme weather and coastal flooding.

The idea was to develop strategies and help towns and cities assess where their greatest risks exist. In some cases, CIRCA, which is based at UConn’s Avery Point campus in Groton, works directly with municipalities to find solutions to those problems.

Initially, CIRCA’s assessments, part of its “Resilient Connecticut” program, focused on New Haven and Fairfield counties. But those efforts have moved beyond the coast to inland towns and cities, and are now including the Hartford area.

In central Connecticut, CIRCA already is working with the town of Portland.

In the past decade, Portland has seen an area encompassing its police station, senior center and library experiencing flooding — sometimes rising to levels above car tires.

The topography of the area has a gentle, curving slope on sunny days. But in a heavy rainstorm, like the one in late summer last year, the bottom of slope becomes a bowl trapping the water.

In that storm, the basement of the police station and the senior center were flooded in a heavy rainstorm last year. The encroaching water threatened the food bank, which is in the basement of the senior center. The floor of a workout room at the police station was covered in water.

“I remember I was so shocked that day,” Sarah Elliott-Caratasios, Portland’s senior services administrator, said. “And I was like, ‘Ok, this must be what it is like to experience a flash flood. It was literally minutes, and it was so high. It was wild.”

Sandbags are now helping to hold back the water, and the racks in the food bank are set six inches off the floor with cinder blocks.

Elliott-Caratasios said those measures have helped, but she still worries about the freezer.

“Anything electrical,” Elliott-Caratasios said. “But we don’t have anywhere else to have the food bank. So we have to make it work.”

Because funding is limited, CIRCA can only work directly with a few towns. After a selection process, CIRCA hires a consultant to develop options. Later, the groundwork forms the basis to seek federal grants for detailed plans and construction. Construction can easily run into millions of dollars, Buchanan said.

Buchanan said CIRCA consultants take the long view, considering storm frequency and intensity out to 2050 and 2100.

“For the most part, our focus is helping Connecticut towns to be more resilient to climate change,” Buchanan said.

‘A climate that no longer exists’

Nationally, major flooding is expected to intensify in the future.

According to First Street Foundation , which analyzes the financial costs of climate change, significant changes for future flooding are expected in Connecticut, based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

For interior Connecticut, a 1-in-100-year flood now is forecast to take place every 30 or 40 years, while in coastal Connecticut, the forecast has an even tighter timeframe, between 10 and 30 years.

The National Climate Assessment , which tracks the fallout of climate change in the United States, reported last year that between 20% and 46% of flood damages across the country are from increasing precipitation. Other major factors include urbanization and changing land use, which can add to storm water runoff and the growth in the number of buildings that are likely to be affected by floods.

“We’re always developing more and more and putting more hard pavement down, which causes greater runoff, so our vulnerability to extreme flooding is increasing,” said Jeff Masters, a climate-change expert and blogger at Yale University’s Climate Connections . “And the climate is changing. Climate is a while new ballgame. The infrastructure that we have for controlling flooding is designed for a climate that no longer exists.”

In recent years, flooding in Hartford’s North End , which has occurred for decades, has intensified, prompting an outcry from local businesses and residents. That outcry has led to more funding from the state government for improvements.

In Portland, First Selectman Ryan J. Curley said the storms, like the one last year, can be very local.

“We had this massive amount of rain and nobody else got it,” Curley said. “Cromwell didn’t get hit or Middletown. We just got this one cell that went right over us, and that’s when the water just can’t get out quick enough.”

Mary Buchanan, Community Resilience Planner for the CIRCA’s Resilient Connecticut Program listens to Portland’s First Selectman Ryan Curley talk about the flooding at the Portland Senior Center and the area during a tour on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

Model for easing flooding

CIRCA is now poised to expand deeper into the Hartford area, which includes the 38 towns and cities that are part of Capitol Region Council of Governments .

CIRCA has identified about 63 areas in the region that could benefit from infrastructure improvements responding to climate change. CIRCA’s assessment also comes at a time when towns and cities in the CRCOG regions were required by the federal government for a 5-year update on improvements that are needed to manage flooding, heat and other natural disasters.

CIRCA is likely to be working on a project in East Hartford to address flooding in an underpass on Main Street. In addition, another project in Berlin, Newington and, possibly, New Britain, could address flooding tied to Piper and Webster brooks. Yale University’s Climate Connections.

Heidi Samokar, a principal planner at CRCOG, said she hopes the initial projects will help lessen flooding problems in those communities.

“I also hope that it provides a model for approaching similar issues in other communities,” Samokar said. “It helps examine areas where there already are issues and to understand with climate change how much worse the issue may become.”

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.