Rockingham Road just north of the Mobil station near the intersection of Old Mammoth Road was overrun with water Monday, as cascades of water crossed Stokes Road and filled the street.
“Upstream beavers are blocking the culvert that is underneath the trail over there,” Public Works Director Janusz Czyzowski said. “When the beavers block that culvert or it gets blocked with debris, it changes the direction of the brook near Stokes, and that’s what it’s doing.”
Czyzowski said the state was cleaning out the area Monday.
While the debris and beaver dams had been addressed in the past, Czyzowski said it appears it must be done again. “They cleaned the blockage in the culvert upstream that’s caused by beavers,” Czyzowski said of the past work.
“I was happy to see that the snow was not melting rapidly,” he added. “We just had a little bit of rain and I think that it isn’t a big flooding event, just puddling. We put the barricades out because at Rockingham Road the water was encroaching on the road because some culverts are partially still frozen with snow banks, and some are blocked with debris. Crews were opening the culverts and cleaning them to allow the water to run to the catch basins.”
Czyzowski said there are a few locations such as Parmenter Road that are low, and crews were watching them.
“That road (Rockingham) is a major road so the culvert between Sanborn and Clark Road, when it’s blocked, flows in a different direction near Stokes, and that culvert cannot take that flow and it diverts across Rockingham Road,” Czyzowski said.