After the Fitchville Pond Dam leaked during the heavy January rains, a new law seeks to makes dams safer.
SB 192, passed on May 8 at the end of the legislative session, prevents owners of dams from keeping them “in a condition which could threaten life or property.” The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) is allowed to conduct investigations into the condition of dams, and order dam owners to make repairs, or DEEP will make the repairs and charge the owner later.
While these regulations were already on the books, putting them in one place explicitly states the department’s legal authority and improves its ability to act in an emergency, Brendan Schain, legal director for DEEP’s Environmental Quality Branch, said.
New law helps to expedite response
“Time is of the essence in these situations, and authority stated in one place can help to expedite our response,” he said.
After the Fitchville Dam leak, DEEP looked at the situation and the existing statutes, and barriers that could have been lessened to ensure it could act as quickly as possible, Chief of Water Protection and Land Reuse Graham Stevens said.
“There’s more clarity in the statute that we can act immediately, and seek cost recovery for our expenditures,” he said.
State Sen. Cathy Osten is among those who hope the law will encourage private owners to seek federal grants and take down unnecessary dams.
“It’s better for the environment to start returning things to their natural way,” she said.
Clarifying what happened at Fitchville Dam
While there was flooding in Norwich on Jan. 10, the flooding was not related to the dam leaking, but from precipitation and other conditions, according to Assistant Director of Dam Safety Programs Chuck Lee.
“The flooding was already a situation unto itself,” he said.
The leak made DEEP cautious, but there was not a “catastrophic breach.”
“We recommended to the Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security that there be a partial evacuation downstream because we could not predict what that dam was going to do,” Lee said.
A breach would have made the existing flooding from the Yantic River much worse, Stevens said.
Dam safety
All dams in the state that are not federally regulated, which number over 4,000, are regulated by DEEP. Different dams get different levels of scrutiny. If a dam is considered to be high hazard, it must be inspected by the owner’s engineer every two years. A significant hazard dam must be inspected every five years. Dam inspections are less frequent as the hazard class reduces, Lee said.
Dams that are high and significant risk need to have an emergency action plan, reviewed and approved by DEEP, Lee said.
Work for fixing or removing dams requires one or more permits, Lee said.
Flooding and the Fitchville Dam now
Last week, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments and UConn’s Connecticut Institute of Resiliency and Climate Adaptation met with heads of area towns to discuss flood response and develop a plan, Bozrah First Selectman Glenn Pianka said.
“There’s a lot of things that need to be addressed,” he said.
Since the rivers in and around Norwich are prone to flooding, DEEP offers planning grants for evaluating resilience. DEEP is also encouraging communities to seek funds from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
DEEP is still tending to the Fitchville Dam in high flow conditions. During the emergency response in January, a cofferdam was made upstream to take pressure off the dam. During certain high flow and high rain events, the area between the dam and cofferdam is pumped to reduce pressure, Stevens said.
Fitchville Dam owner Seymour Adelman has been directed by DEEP to make sure the dam is safe, and the agency is communicating with him. DEEP has conducted engineering analyses on the dam, Stevens said.
Calls to Adelman seeking comment on his plans were not returned.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: New dam law expedites emergency response to flooding: How will this affect Norwich?
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