City officials celebrated the completion of a multi-million dollar project to address past flooding issues in a Norwalk neighborhood.
RJ Scofield, Patch Staff
NORWALK, CT — City officials celebrated the completion of a multi-million dollar project to address past flooding issues in the Dreamy Hollow neighborhood of Norwalk with a ribbon cutting ceremony held Wednesday afternoon.
The $10.2 million project improved storm drainage and sanitary sewer lines to reduce flooding in the neighborhood by over 22 percent, according to additional press materials provided by the city.
Gathered on Friendly Road, just minutes away from Westport Avenue, Mayor Harry Rilling said the project grew from a study conducted by the city in 2019 to identify areas of Norwalk that were prone to flooding.
"Since that time," Rilling said, "my administration and the council has made it a priority to work on those items to reduce flooding and make sure that we give the residents a better quality of life."
Rilling also noted the area had even seen sewage backing up into some of the homes as a result of the flooding and hoped the completion of the project would bring residents of the neighborhood, which was once home to the now-dried-up Dreamy Hollow Pond, "a tremendous amount of relief."
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Rilling also thanked Chief of Operations and Public Works Vanessa Valadares for spearheading the project, as well as her team and partners on the project, for all their hard work bringing it to completion.
Valadares said the project was the biggest the city has undertaken related to drainage in at least 20 years.
"We've had this neighborhood under water in pretty much every single significant storm," Valadares said, "and [residents] were always coming to us to find a solution."
According to Valadares, the city conducted a study to examine the behavior of the water in those storms, which took about a month, then came up with some potential solutions to apply to the neighborhood.
She also noted her team had to relocate a water mainline and add another main sewer line on the other side of the street due to the size of the culverts in the area.
Since the project's completion, Valadares said the area has already seen less issues in light of the recent influx of rain across Connecticut during the past few weeks.
Common Council Member Anne Wennerstrand, who represents District C, thanked Valadares and her DPW team, as well as her fellow council members, for making the project a reality.
"This was an incredibly complex multiyear process," Wennerstrand said.
She also commended those involved in the project for their resourceful use of funding "for a longterm infrastructure project that really benefits the residents, their quality of life, but also boosts the economic value of the community, potentially lowering insurance costs here, and just really boosting the quality of life here."
Wennerstrand also thanked the residents of Dreamy Hollow for their patience and involvement in the process following "a lot of public discussion."
"There was a lot of work with the community to get this done," Wennerstrand said. "There were a lot of voices that were raised, and that they kept raising their voices, and that type of engagement is what allowed this process to come to completion, along with the patience of the neighbors and residents that live here, whose lives were disrupted by the work but really worth it in the long run."
Council Member At-Large Barbara Smyth further commended Valadares and her partners on the project, as well as the city's former public works chief, Anthony Carr, whom she credited with starting the project.
"As a council electee, I have done a lot of door knocking here and talked to a lot of the people about what they have been dealing with," Smyth said, "and so it was so easy to support this project as a council member...what a group effort it has been to truly make a difference in the people's lives here around Friendly Pond."
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