1,000-Year Flood Whammies WHS Athletic Complex for 2nd Time in Three Years

On Sept. 1, 2021, record-setting rainfall from Hurricane Ida overwhelmed the drainage watercourse behind the bleachers at Wilton High School’s Veterans Memorial Stadium. The deluge deposited a muddy mess of soil, branches and debris that had flowed down the hill behind the stadium onto the track and Fujitani Field. Water and debris continued coursing onto the playing fields to the south end of the stadium, reaching as far as the youth baseball field.

Who would have anticipated that the very same thing would happen almost exactly three years later with another record-setting storm that brought flooding and destruction to several areas in Wilton?

But that’s just what happened on Sunday, Aug. 18, when more than 8 inches of rain fell on Wilton in a short amount of time. Just like three years ago, the drainage pipe meant to carry the water away from the field became clogged with mud, branches and parts of trees, rocks and other debris, and sent the overflow pouring onto the field. When the rain stopped there was a thick layer of mud coating much of the track and field.

Wilton will likely have to repeat much of the same extensive cleanup effort that the town performed in 2021: silt and debris needed to be extracted from the turf itself, and coconut husk and sand infill that had washed away had to be replaced, followed by a disinfection process. The drainage system encircling the track was stuffed with mud and had to be cleaned out. The track also required specialized clearing, cleaning and testing by the track installer.

For this go-round, Parks and Recreation Director Steve Pierce said that the extensive refurbishment of the turf and track will be once again be done by the original contractors who installed them. But already the town’s Parks Department crews were hard at work getting that process started.

“We’re taking as much as mud off the field as possible. They did a great job today. We had two to three inches of mud. Now you can actually see the field. The track still needs a lot of work. We have all the interior track drains up because we had to clean those out because they were full of mud, and we’ve taken over 100 cartloads of mud off. We’ll continue to move debris and that sort of thing, while waiting to hear back when they’ll be scheduled [for the contractors] to be able to go out and finish the job,” Pierce said.

It will, of course, take time to order the coconut infill and get onto the contractor’s schedule, and for now the field will be off limits — how long is still unknown, according to Pierce.

Three years ago Wilton felt the impact of the closed stadium field. The track and turf field were closed for six weeks, disrupting numerous youth and Wilton High School sports teams, the WHS marching band, and residents who use the facilities. Now, the latest devastating flooding has also come just as the fall sports season is getting underway.

On Monday, Wilton Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Smith said in a message to families that alternatives were being found for field usage, especially as the WHS sports season is just beginning.

“Our Athletic Director, Bobby Rushton, went to work, immediately coordinating with his colleagues across the league to secure alternative practice locations, ensuring that our students could proceed with their first day of tryouts without interruption,” Smith wrote, adding that Lilly Field was opened on Monday, and the district expected to have access to the grass fields around the high school beginning Tuesday. He also called restoring Fujitani Field a “priority.”

Pierce asked for the community’s patience and said town personnel are working to get the cleanup done as quickly as possible. But with damage at several other town facilities, they’re being pulled in several directions.

“We also have extensive damage at Merwin Meadows, and we have to take care of, whether it’s walking trails, the park itself, debris, fences down, all kinds of stuff that we have to maintain and take care of as well. And by the way, we still have 31 fields we have to maintain and take care of with mowing, … and we also have playgrounds that have had infill material, the playground wood chips, that have been washed away. So we’re going to have to redo those before school starts as well,” Pierce said.

Field Cleanup Costs — And why hasn’t the problem been fixed yet?

In 2021, the $300,000 cost of the cleanup and restoration was largely reimbursed by FEMA. Pierce said it hasn’t yet been determined whether FEMA will do the same for this year’s storm — although Gov. Ned Lamont did declare a state of civil emergency on Monday. Town officials are keeping account of the work they’re doing for the current cleanup in case there will be FEMA funding.

After the 2021 cleanup, the town hired the engineering consultant Stantec to study the drainage system and the surrounding area to identify potential mitigation strategies that might prevent such damage from heavy rain storms in the future, with the expectation that extreme weather events would increase in frequency and severity. The in-depth study included hydraulic modeling of the entire sports complex area..

At that time, Town officials — including the Board of Selectmen and the Department of Public Works — weighed various risk scenarios with the cost of prevention., which was estimated at $1.1 million for a weather event like Ida.

Officials ultimately decided to proceed with drainage improvement work in two phases: constructing a concrete retaining wall along the stream behind the stadium to divert water, followed by the installation of a 48-inch drainage pipe and additional culverts to carry the water from around the stadium to the Cider Mill pond.

In late 2022, Congress passed the $1.7 trillion Fiscal Year 2023 omnibus appropriations bill, which President Biden signed into law, including $1,425,000 secured by Congressman Jim Himes (CT-04) for Wilton to pay for the entire two-phase mitigation work.

The project was designed and engineered by Stantec and submitted for review by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of the federal grant program. But the project can’t be bid and work can’t begin until the town receives approval from HUD. In addition, the grant money can only be used for work related to this project.

At Tuesday evening’s Board of Selectmen meeting, First Selectman Toni Boucher read an update report from Director of DPW/Town Engineer Frank Smeriglio about the project’s status. He said that the project has been undergoing a complicated and time-consuming environmental review with HUD for the last 14 months, and once approved, it must also pass a review with CT-HUD.

It’s this process that has delayed any remediation work.

“Please know if this process was completed and the project was bid out in 2024, we would not have begun this project until winter of 2024-2025. We are still trying to achieve this time frame, but it’s very difficult and may not happen now,” Smeriglio wrote.

According to Boucher, had the town bonded the project or used American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funding to pay for it, the town would be much further along in remediation.

“We could have probably done this quicker if the town had paid the $1.4 million, but because we, they went through the HUD funding process, that’s why it’s taking all this time,” Boucher said.

As for finding budget money for cleaning up the mess on the field, Boucher said the town cannot afford to do cleaning and remediation on its own after two rounds of town budget cuts during this past budget cycle.