County residents anxiously watching water

WALLAGRASS – Nicole Bouchard is hoping Friday’s sudden snowfall is a blessing, not a curse.

Since Thursday, the Soldier Pond resident has watched rising floodwaters on the Fish River fill her basement and creep within inches of her home’s first floor, where her husband has mounted most of their furniture and appliances on cement blocks.

“It’s a good thing it’s snowing [instead of raining],” Bouchard said Friday morning from work. “Hopefully, it will slow the water down.”

But even while Bouchard hopes the burst of snow helps to slow the rising water, she and officials across Aroostook County are anxiously watching to see how much the heavy precipitation compounds the flooding problems in the area’s rivers and lakes.

In southern Aroostook, residents woke Friday to a heavy pile of wet snow that melted off by early afternoon. Farther north, communities such as Fort Kent, New Sweden and Ashland were hit with as much as 4 to 8 inches of snow, according to Joseph Hewitt, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Caribou.

Maine Public Service Co. was out Friday morning repairing lines across the region. Most of the outages were because of wet, heavy snow building up on tree branches, which then fell onto the lines, Virginia R. Joles, MPS director of public information, said Friday. About 2,500 customers lost power, but most had their electricity restored by Friday afternoon, she said.

The snowfall is increasing the potential of the area setting precipitation records, Hewitt said Friday.

So far, the Northeast region has seen about 1.25 to 2.25 inches of total storm precipitation.

“So you’re talking a lot of water,” Hewitt said.

Melting snow will add to the problem, as will more rain, which Hewitt said is headed north later this weekend.

As of Friday, the Aroostook River at Washburn was at 12 feet (its flood stage is 14 feet), the Fish River at Fort Kent was at 10.6 feet (flood stage 11 feet), and the St. John River at Fort Kent was at 22.4 feet (flood stage 25 feet), Hewitt said.

In Fort Fairfield, Fire Chief Paul Durepo said the Aroostook River was only a foot away from flooding the Grimes Road and that its flow was up significantly to about 50,000 cubic feet per second. Durepo said the figure is much higher than the 20,000 cubic feet per second the town usually sees in early spring when the ice goes out. The flow is projected to increase further because of weekend rain, though Durepo said he expects to see the water flow start to decrease by Sunday.

Officials believe communities will escape mostly unharmed if they can close out the weekend without major flooding.

“If we can just make it through the weekend, hopefully, we’ll be all set,” Vernon Ouellette, director of the Aroostook County Emergency Management Agency, said Friday.

But to be prepared for whatever happens this weekend, Ouellette said the agency is keeping a close eye on the rivers as well as rising levels in the region’s lakes.

In St. Agatha, half the Island Road causeway to Pelletier Island is underwater, in some parts by as much as a foot, because of rising levels at Long Lake. About 16 people live on the island year-round, though St. Agatha Town Manager Ryan Pelletier said only about six or seven are waiting out the rising water in their homes.

The local Emergency Management Agency assisted several Pelletier Island residents who wanted to leave and placed a Road Closed sign at the end of the causeway, Ouellette said.

“The people who are still there have boats, so if they need to get out, they can,” Ouellette said.

At Soldier Pond – a basin on the Fish River at Wallagrass – and at Portage Lake, many camps were flooded out, and quite a few people have left their dwellings, Ouellette said.

The agency has been on guard for an emergency situation for weeks – starting with an ice jam on the St. John River earlier this month – so Ouellette said officials are simply waiting and watching.

“If water rises above the flood stage, people will have to leave. Emergency response officials are ready to move people out if that happens,” Ouellette said. “It’s just a phone call away and they’re ready to react.”