MILFORD – From her Route 2 home, Elnora Scofield can predict just when the Greenfield Road – another major access road in town – will be flooded by watching the rising water levels in her backyard.

“When the water reaches the hump in my backyard, I know that the Greenfield Road is flooded,” said Scofield, who has lived in Milford for 32 years.

By the time it reaches the incline in her yard, she knows the road is impassable.

Frustrated by an increase in flooding last year and an uncertainty about what the spring will bring, Scofield and other residents want a more advanced warning system for flooding as well as changes in how water is managed in the extensive dam system along the vast Penobscot River watershed.

About two dozen residents brought these concerns to a meeting Thursday in Milford of state, county and local agencies as well as representatives of the National Weather Service.

Organized by the Penobscot County Emergency Management Agency, the forum was held to discuss what can be done to improve communications. The 31/2-hour program at the municipal building was the second such forum on flooding issues in as many days, with the first drawing about 60 people to Millinocket where last year record-high levels of precipitation were recorded.

“One of the things we’re trying to find out is are there any long-term and short ways to mitigate some of those things,” said Tom Robertson, Penobscot County Emergency Management Agency director.

The Penobscot County commissioners are committed to improving communications in the area, but Robertson said it wasn’t clear what kind of system was needed.

Dam operators collect daily flow levels while the National Weather Service tracks weather patterns and has access to data on eight streams or rivers in Maine, yet this information is not always coordinated, officials said.

Flooding almost has become a rite of spring in places such as Milford and Millinocket where several waterways converge, although unusual weather patterns and above-normal rainfall have exacerbated it.

Milford resident Bill Mackowski, who jacked his house up 4 feet after the last major flood in 1987, said Thursday that usually he could expect four flooding incidents a year, two in the spring and two in the fall. Last year there were nine.

Residents at the meeting weren’t convinced that nature alone was to blame. Some thought the dam operators in the northern part of the county were holding back and then releasing water for financial gain with little concern for the impact on people downstream.

“Why are they dumping the way they are dumping?” asked Julia O’Leary, who bought a home in Milford in 1987, less than a month before the big flood. She wondered why, when there is a lengthy span of rain, dam operators don’t release water gradually rather than all at once.

Last fall, O’Leary said, 3 feet of water filled her basement in 45 minutes, something she at least in part blames on the dam operators.

Similar concerns about the dams were raised in Millinocket on Wednesday, said Robertson, who suggested that some of those concerns might be misplaced. With precipitation levels abnormally high – Millinocket saw about 64 inches of rain last year, the highest in the 111 years rainfall has been recorded there – dam operators have their own problems to contend with.

Robertson said that one dam operator normally has two reservoirs to help contain water, but that both recently were full, leaving no place to put it.

Richard Fennelly, manager of generating assets for PPL Maine, which operates seven hydroelectric dams from Veazie to Medway, defended dam operations farther upriver.

“I believe they are doing everything they can up there,” he said.

Although some dams can vary flow level and withhold water, the seven PPL dams are “run of river” operations, which means the flow rate of water leaving the dam must match what is coming in, Fennelly said.

Dam projects require an extensive review and licensing process and come under federal restrictions, including in at least one case maintaining water levels during part of the year to allow for trout spawning, officials said Thursday.

That didn’t sit too well with some in the audience who saw it as an issue of misplaced priorities.

“People should be more important than the fish,” Scofield said.

Feeling left out of decisions and actions by dam operators that affect them, Milford residents said they would press to make changes.

Fennelly warned, however, that making changes to the licenses might be difficult. The time for comment on the licenses usually is during renewal, which in most cases is 30 to 40 years after the initial license. And he said FERC hasn’t made such changes midway through a license.

“You don’t see it happen,” he said.

But Milford Selectman Julie Harrington isn’t giving up and is convinced that with enough people backing it, improvements could be made.

“Things change all the time,” she said.