Dike saved Fort Fairfield from flooding

FORT FAIRFIELD – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that the Fort Fairfield Local Protection Project, a dike that protects the town’s business district, saved the town more than $1.3 million in potential flood damage two weeks ago.

The dike, completed in 2001, protects the town to an elevation of nearly 373 feet above sea level. Without the dike, the business district would flood at 359 feet, and the water rose to just below 364 feet during the week of April 10-16.

Ice, a foot thick and more, created a miles-long ice jam on the Aroostook River from Tinker Dam on the Maine-New Brunswick border to more than a mile beyond the Aroostook River at Fort Fairfield.

“The Corps dike prevented a serious flood event in the town center for the first time since the project was built four years ago,” David Larsen, project manager in the Corps’ engineering and planning division, wrote in a news release.

The 2,550-foot-long earthen dike, also with 290 feet of concrete retaining wall, was built by Ed Pelletier and Sons Inc. construction company of Madawaska. The structure also has a pumping station and conduit to handle interior drainage during periods of high water.

The dike is one of 100 local flood prevention projects engineered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in New England. A similar structure protects the Fort Kent business district.

The decision to construct a dike at Fort Fairfield, which cost about $4 million, was made in the late 1990s after the town had suffered six floods in nine years. A flood in April 1994 caused damage estimated at more than $1 million.

When the town was under threat of water and ice in mid-April, Fort Fairfield Fire Chief Paul Durepo said several times that the dike had saved the town from disastrous flooding this spring.

While water levels were down Tuesday at Fort Fairfield, the St. John River threatened homes and flooded hundreds of acres of low-lying agricultural and forestland north in the St. John Valley.

Water levels rose from 17.75 feet on Monday morning to 23.74 feet Tuesday morning at a gauging station on the St. John River at Fort Kent. Flood stage is 27 feet in the lowest-lying areas.

Fort Kent Police Chief Kenneth Michaud said the river rose 3 feet during the night Monday.

The Fish River also rose dramatically, he said.

“If we did not have a dike, Main Street would be under 2 feet of water,” Michaud said. “Apartments at the rear of the St. Louis Church are still 3 feet above the water.”

That’s the first residential area to flood in Fort Kent, when it does.

He said a lot of uninhabited areas, low-lying fields, were underwater all along the St. John River.

It was much the same story at Presque Isle along the Presque Isle Stream Tuesday afternoon. Water was up into some residential yards along the river. Water was lapping at the bank along the Presque Isle Stream Park, just 100 feet from Main Street.

Mark Turner, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service at Caribou, said Tuesday afternoon that the St. John River was expected to crest at about 4 p.m. Tuesday with 24 feet of water at Fort Kent.

“Everything upriver from Fort Kent has crested,” he said. “There have been no evacuations.

“The rise is due to the rain on Monday and melting of the snow in the woods west of Fort Kent,” Turner said.

Turner said there is still a lot of ice in an ice jam above the village of Dickey in Allagash. Water has a way through the area under the ice.

He said more rain was expected in the area Wednesday and Thursday.