Flooding worries business owners

By Angeljean Chiaramida
Staff writer

August 20, 2008 11:11 pm

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SALISBURY — Bridge Road is the quickest way from Salisbury to Anna Jaques Hospital in an emergency, a major north/south thoroughfare and a prime commercial center, yet floods have closed it and many of its businesses twice over recent years.

As the town moves forward with plans to build a recreational rail trail over portions of the former railroad bed that collapsed in 2007 and flooded the roadway and its businesses for a week, some Bridge Road business owners say Salisbury officials are putting the cart before the horse.

Recreational rail trails are lovely, they say, but building one over the temporary fix made to stop the flooding in 2007 is not wise, especially since Town Creek continues to flood daily at every high tide in the back lot of Hudson's Tackle and Marine.

No one is against recreational trails, business owners said. However, spending $2 million in Massachusetts Highway Department state and federal funds for the new Eastern Marsh Trail running from Mudnock Road to the Merrimack River before permanently fixing the problematic railroad bed over Town Creek is premature, Tim Lamprey of Harbor Garden Center and Craig Hudson Jr. of Hudson's said.

A portion of the proposed new trail will travel right over the previously collapsed railroad trestle that gave out completely during the 2007 Patriots Day storm. The railroad trestle housed the tide gate meant to protect Town Creek and Bridge Road from the Merrimack River's storm tides.

But decades of insufficient maintenance by its owners, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, left the trestle, road and its businesses vulnerable, said Hudson's owners, who launched a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the town for the hundreds of thousands in damages they sustained in 2007 during the floods.

April 2007 isn't the first time Bridge Road flooded. The gate failed in 2003 and 2005, Hudson said. Although repairs were made then, they weren't sufficient. In 2007, the town hired SPS New England to make an emergency repair when the entire railroad bed fell into the raging Merrimack, leaving the entire northern corridor of the road under 4 feet of water for hours.

Selectmen have said repeatedly the repair was temporary. They have also said they are looking for money to make permanent repairs. Selectman Jerry Klima has met with concerned Bridge Road property owners in weeks past, and more meetings are planned next week.

Klima said the new rail trail is not premature and will help prevent another catastrophic flood as in 2007.

"If the rail trail is built, it will raise the level of the railroad bed across the marsh above the 100-year-flood level," Klima said yesterday. "Today, the bed is less than the 100-year-flood level. A second reason it is not premature is because the new rail trail will add paving and grass to the area, and that will be more difficult to breach than the gravel that's there now. If left as gravel, it will breach again and inundate the businesses and the road."

Business owners fear if the new rail trail is built now, paving over the temporary fix, a permanent solution to the problem is in jeopardy. Lamprey worries that if MassHighway builds the rail trail, it won't want to "dig up the new trail" when the time for permanent repairs are at hand.

Salisbury has control over the breached railroad bed, thanks to a 99-year lease for the old railroad tracks from the MBTA, which owns the tracks. The lease makes the new rail trail possible, but it also gives the town liability for maintaining the tracks, Bridge Street business owners say.

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