Work is set to begin in repairing the washed away Georges Hill Road in Southbury, leaving a handful of residents unable to leave the property by car.
If Mary Topher wants to leave her property, she quite literally must go over the river and through the woods.
“We can walk to the back of our property through the woods, then through another neighbor’s property, then crossing this brook where it’s low and onto Georges Hill," Topher said.
Three homes used to use what's left of the bridge to get to Georges Hill Road and the rest of Southbury.
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“Crossing the brook is just slippery…it just feels scary because we see the kind of damage water can make,” Topher said.
On the other side of the Kettletown Brook...
“I have a 10-foot drop at the end of the driveway and our road is literally a river,” Nicole Walser, of Southbury, said.
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Neighbors are eager for progress.
“We have kids starting school next week, we really aren’t sure where we stand with that. As a safety issue, we need to know if an emergency was to happen someone could get up to my house,” Laura Pham Lewis, of Southbury, said.
Late this afternoon, CT Department of Transportation workers arrived on scene. Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto said they will be working to rebuild the washed away Georges Hill Road as early as tomorrow morning.
“It’s going to allow people who are neighbors on the other side to be able to access the roadway. What it will not do is necessarily replace their private bridges that abut the roadway, but at least they'll be able to get onto the roadway via foot,” Eucalitto said.
He said CTDOT received approval from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Wednesday to move the brook back to its natural water path.
“We hope that the road will be finished and reopened for traffic by the end of Sunday, that if weather holds out and if all the supplies are available to us. But that's our goal,” Eucalitto said.
