News Feature: "With more and heavier rain, more inland flooding in CT" from Hartford Business

November 17, 2023

HVA is featured in this article on flood resilience in Connecticut by Jan Ellen Spiegel, a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror, published in Hartford Business.

A driveway crosses over the Hockanum Brook in Beacon Falls. The culvert underneath the road is one of many in the Housatonic Valley that are too small and are deteriorating from excess water. The surrounding areas face flooding problems as a result. (Jan Ellen Spiegel/CT Mirror)

“Hockanum Brook is practically singing as it bubbles along on a cloudless, deep-blue-sky on a late-September morning, just about a mile from where it empties into the Naugatuck River in central Beacon Falls. Seemingly idyllic and serene.
But it’s not.
That’s why Mike Jastremski and two other people were out there in waders and safety vests with surveying equipment, battling poison ivy and mosquitoes after three straight days of rain.
The three are with the Housatonic Valley Association, a nonprofit founded in 1942 whose mission is to conserve that river’s watershed in the three states it traverses — Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. But beginning in the early 2000s, when it became apparent that flooding was occurring more frequently, part of HVA’s focus shifted to dealing with that.
The torrential rains of summer and early fall of 2023 have driven the point home.
‘I think the pattern of high water has changed considerably,’ said Jastremski, who is HVA’s watershed conservation director. ‘We’re getting more water per storm in a shorter period of time.’ He noted that some of the traditional high water times — spring runoff from winter snows — have all but vanished….”