In another warning sign of potential tax implications for Winthrop residents from the town’s defiance of a prominent state housing law, a Town Council member told residents threatened by floodwaters that addressing their needs is likely to require new dedicated spending.

The council member, Patrick Costigan, serves on the Citizens Advisory Commission on Climate. The commission held a hearing Tuesday to consider the town’s options after state officials told Winthrop that its defiance of the 3A law means the town lost the chance at least two state grants totaling about $1.2 million that could have helped alleviate chronic flooding in the Morton and Pico areas of town.

Several residents of those areas and other flood-prone sections of town came before the commission to demand alternative funding ideas, given that their homes already are taking on water. At times that led to direct challenges of Mr Costigan, one of four Town Council members who have voted consistently to violate the state’s 3A law.

Two neighbors in the Morton Street area, Jeanette Roy and Jennifer Jones, were especially blunt. They described to Mr Costigan their fear that the 3A-related cutoff in several categories of state money to Winthrop – including those covering climate-related work – would multiply the number of years their homes go without protections.

The flooding already has become frighteningly regular, Ms Roy said. “We had a beautiful sunny day,” she recalled of one such incident, “and we had about 3 feet of water on our street.” A refrigerator and a deck floated to the front of her house, she said. At least two neighbors have moved out rather than continue to endure it, she said.

Years of delays

The town’s plans to build protective berms along Morton Street and the Belle Isle Marsh Reservation, which might have taken three years with immediate state support, could take twice as long, or more, while the town hunts for alternative funding, Ms Roy said. “There are six years, at least, that we’re looking at, that my house could be gone,” she said. “It’s terrifying.”

The Morton Street area is rated by the climate commission as the most urgent among 10 locations in Winthrop needing significant help with the flooding threat. The commission helped develop a plan that would spend some $12.5 million over about three years to raise the roadway, fix storm pipes and build protective berms in the area. The town has won about $1 million in state funding for the preparatory work, but it was denied a $1.2 million request last year due to questions on details of the project, and then was told last month that an $800,000 grant application would not even be considered by the state because Winthrop is violating the 3A law.

The delays in funding will likely raise the costs even more, said Kristen Homeyer of the North Suffolk Office of Resilience and Sustainability, a climate-focused coalition of the municipalities of Winthrop, Revere and Chelsea. Ms Homeyer helped write the state grant application for work at the Morton Street area, and she told the commission that the town’s position on 3A has become a key obstacle. “That prevents me from doing my job,” she told the panel.

Mr Costigan responded to the complaints from Morton-area residents with a mix of assurances that he genuinely cared about such problems, suggestions that the town could fund its own lower-cost flood-barrier systems, and blame on the state for creating the 3A law.

“I understand everyone’s frustration,” the council member said. “The state put us in this predicament, and this is where we are,” he said.

‘Town can contribute’

The 3A law applies to nearly all cities and towns in the Greater Boston area. Winthrop is among a few that have chosen to defy the law, even though the town’s existing housing density means it could comply without adding any new housing. Mr Costigan and other defiant council members have explained their position by insisting the town should not let the state set zoning policy, even though courts have ruled that the state holds the clear right to do so.

For the Morton area, Mr Costigan has suggested the town could spend about $100,000 for a system known as AquaDams – large water-filled barriers that can be deployed in advance of storms. Another climate commission member, John DaRos, who also serves on the Town Council, said the idea has potential, but likely only represents a temporary solution. A co-chair of the commission, Norman Hyett, said that clogged pipes underneath the roadway were the biggest cause of chronic flooding in the Morton area.

And Mr Costigan, with regard to another flooding priority area in Winthrop, criticized the town’s reliance on case-by-case responses, saying the town regularly dispatches emergency workers on overtime salaries during flooding to help protect homes in the area of Tileston and Girdlestone Streets. “That is ludicrous, that is ridiculous,” he said. “That’s not a way to run a flood mitigation plan here in town.”

More broadly, Mr Costigan called for the town to spend more of its own money on flooding challenges, while he and some other council members keep battling the state over the 3A law, and while federal support for climate-related work dries up in the Trump administration. “We don’t have the state funding or the fed funding – we have to do it ourselves,” he said. “I’ve said that before: Winthrop Strong.”

Mr Costigan cited as an example the ongoing construction work on Revere Street, a $7.5 million project toward which the town contributed a share of the cost. “It just proves that this town can contribute and can give funds to cure some problems here, with regard to infrastructure,” Mr Costigan said.

Residents of the flood-affected areas pleaded with him to find a solution quickly. “What is the cost of 3A compliance versus the cost of losing our neighbors, our homes, our streets, our community – at what point does the cost analysis rank out another way,” Ms Roy said. “Where is the leadership, where is the town leadership, where are the people who are supposed to be making sure that the constituents are OK,” Ms Jones added.