It’s been nearly a month since NBC Connecticut first shared the concerns from residents along Jobs Pond in Portland where water levels are quickly rising.
Now, residents there say water is still rising, and more and more people are leaving their homes.
This week, the USDA and Senator Richard Blumenthal are making trips to the pond to get a closer look at the situation and see if help can come from the federal level.
“The water is rising one inch per day, whether or not it rains. When it rains, a two-inch rainstorm can yield a vertical rise of eight inches,” Diane Godin said.
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Her family has lived on the pond since the 1940s.
“The government process, unfortunately, the amount of time that that takes them to complete their analysis and their recommendation, we’ll run out of time before then,” Godin said. “At this rate, with the rate of rise, we have literally until the middle of May and that’s it, our first floor is done.”
The Bishops, whose home sits on a point at the edge of the pond, are running 11 sump pumps to keep the water out of their basement.
“We’re getting so desperate,” Jeanne Bishop said. “We need help now, we don’t need help three months from now.”
The last time the water level rose in the pond, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pumped it out. As a part of that deal, Bishop said, there was supposed to be a long-term solution to prevent a repeat flooding event.
“Forty years ago, everybody dropped the ball and nobody fixed it, and here we are,” she said. “We’ve got two culverts that bring in a lot of rain. We get our rain, we get everyone else’s rain. One comes off of 66, one comes out of the Y. We need a solution.”
Veronica Ketch, president of the Jobs Pond Waterfront Corporation, said they’re hoping a long-term fix will come this time.
“The long-term solution was supposed to be a piece of the puzzle after the pumping happened and it just never happened,” she said. “40 years later, here we are, and it’s higher.”
Ketch, whose parents met at Jobs Pond when they were 12, is also experiencing her home flooding. For her, it’s a summer home, but for many, their homes are year-round.
She said the USDA visited a week ago for an assessment, and will be back on Tuesday to survey the water levels in homes.
“To start collecting their data which hopefully will be done quick, and from there, a report is submitted to Washington, DC,” she said. “Hopefully [Blumenthal] can get the wheels moving with everybody because as you can see…we do not have any time to wait. It’s come up probably a foot since I was here a few days ago.”
They hope the visits this week will provide them with some hope, but they’re growing tired and burnt out, not wanting to leave behind the homes they’ve had in their families for generations.
“We’re all older, so it’s very difficult,” Bishop said. “I don’t want to leave, I mean, even with all this, I don’t want to leave my house. I love it here.”
