Three years ago, a rainstorm like the one the Hudson Valley experienced this week dumped more than half a foot of rain on some Orange County communities along the Hudson River. WAMC visited two locales to see how things stand today and how that experience informed their response this time around.
The Highland Brook runs behind Brian Frederickson's Mountain Avenue home in Highland Falls. When water levels rose during a July 9, 2023 storm, he says one woman died trying to save her dog.
He says homes along the brook were devastated, including his own. A giant slab of concrete beneath his house still sits in the brook. It looks like the walls around the creek are caving in, falling into the river.
"All the concrete walls are being undermined," Frederickson said. "Once this level drops, once all the water run off, and we get no rain for a couple days, the water level will drop, and you'll see it undercuts every wall along this brook, any rock wall that's there either collects sediment on one side or gets gets pushed out away from there, and that top of that wall starts to collapse, and it runs all the way down the brook.”
Orange County communities like Highland Falls and nearby Cornwall received about nine inches of water in six hours during the 2023 storm, according to Cornwall Deputy Supervisor Tim McCarty.
“When that a massive amount of water came down, it washed everything away, and it flooded right away," McCarty said. "And it got underneath the pavement, washed out roadways, bridges.”
Cornwall Highway Superintendent Tom Gschwind recalled Highland Falls roads were torn up and bridges were destroyed. He showed photos of the destruction, including a building that had to be torn down before it was swept away by the water. Another showed people who got caught in the giant swells.
“A car actually got swept into the creek," Gschwind said. "The people had to be rescued by fire truck. Their car ended up right at the mouth of the Hudson River, but the the water was terrible. So now, when we get these alerts that says, 'Hey, you're about to get flooded, we know it's time to prepare.’”
Gschwind and McCarty say Cornwall has learned from that storm how to prepare by making sure all the water has somewhere to flow. Before this latest storm McCarty said they were prepping days in advance, like making sandbags.
“We've been tracking this weather for the last couple of days and prepping for it, making sure that all of our drainage ditches are cleared, our storm drains are cleared, McCarty said. "Our catch bases are cleared.”
Gschwind says they are faced with problems out of their control, like where the water wants to go during a storm.
“I mean, water's going to do what water wants to do," Gschwind said. "Water remembers, you know. Just because you build a house and fill in a swamp. Water's still going to go there, you know.”
He says the damage from the 2023 storm cost millions of dollars and they are still working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get bridges and other areas repaired.
Congressman Pat Ryan, who represents the area, says more action is needed, especially for communities like Highland Falls and Cornwall.
"So we we got a disaster designation, a declaration," Ryan said. "But these these storms cause years of damage. In that case, people's homes were destroyed. A woman lost her life. So the fact that once in a century storms are now happening every year should be a wake-up call that that we have to take much more aggressive action when it comes to to climate.”
But, he says upgrading the water infrastructure of a town like Cornwall to handle a storm like the one in 2023 is not realistic.
“The way towns kind of work in the state is they tax and engineer and design for what's called 100-year rainstorm, and that was 1000-year rainstorm," Ryan said. "It'd be nearly impossible to build the whole town with drainage to handle 1000-year storm. We wouldn't be able to live here and pay the taxes because it's that expensive. Just this little project here in this little neighborhood is 10 million, but to do the whole entire town, I mean, you're talking in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions, well into the billion mark, to be able to do the whole town in 1000-year drainage.”
Frederickson is part of the Highlands Community Resilience Group. He says they are working to address issues like flooding in Highlands Falls. One issue he says is no one is maintaining the brook. And he hasn’t received any government support to protect his home, except for donations.
“It's just homeowners are dealing with it, and we're basically the figure it out class," Frederickson said. "You know, you own the home, you're alone the brook, you got to figure it out”
