Several Winthrop residents angrily blamed town failures for water main breaks and home flooding triggered by last month’s snow storm, and town officials in turn blamed private water system operators and threatened to sue them.

At the first Town Council gathering since the February 23 storm that knocked out power to more than 250,000 customers across Massachusetts, including a quarter of Winthrop’s 8,500 households, town leaders extensively described the power and water losses and repeatedly blamed others for the failures.

In a prolonged explanation for how the power outage led to seven water main breaks, Winthrop’s director of public works, Steven Calla, put the primary blame on a private contractor he described as responsible for making sure that water pressure systems would be maintained once the power failed.

Mr Calla and other town leaders invited affected residents to file legal cases aimed at holding the vendor they cited as responsible. Mr Calla also suggested the state’s Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which runs the Deer Island sewage treatment plant, had been in a position to monitor the system settings.

Blame dispersed

Yet the DPW director also noted the need for the town to consider establishing a backup power system to help better run the water line controls during a time of emergency. The water system had established settings for its actions in the event of a power loss, but those settings in retrospect did not appear correct, Mr Calla said.

The town manager, Anthony Marino, also suggested that Winthrop needs a “proper storm water system,” cited the costs of creating one, and warned of the risks of the town’s ongoing fight with the state that is hindering the town’s ability to receive state funding. Mr Marino also suggested the town may need to increase payments from town residents to cover the costs.

The Town Council, after weeks of delaying the matter, also voted at its meeting Tuesday to approve resident Marty Finn to fill the Precinct 6 council seat vacated in November by the resignation of council member John DaRos. The council voted on Mr Finn’s appointment after one of council’s new members, Joseph Romano, successfully objected to attempts by the council’s president, Jim Letterie, to again postpone the vote.

Problems from the February 23 storm’s 15 inches of snow and 60 mph wind gusts were magnified by remnants of the 2-foot snowfall a month earlier, then greatly compounded for homes in several parts of town that lost their water supplies when the power loss left the town unable to stop water flows from Revere.

The result was especially bad for people in flood-prone areas of Winthrop where the water flow broke underground mains and the water poured into their basements while the state’s MWRA took emergency action to help fix lines and restore service.

Cooperation concerns

Among other things, the situation highlighted the town government’s longstanding failure to upgrade the water mains, and raised questions of its level of cooperation with the city of Revere and the state of Massachusetts, including the MWRA, the operator of the Deer Island sewage treatment plant.

Residents alarmed and affected by the situation pushed town officials over the ensuing weeks for explanations of how a power outage – a somewhat routine occurrence – had such wide-ranging and damaging effects, and several reiterated that during the council meeting.

One of those affected residents, Mark Sennott, directly accused Mr Calla’s DPW snow plow drivers of making the situation worse by trying to drive a truck through water from the main breaks that was covering a flooded street. The result, Mr Sennott said, was that the plow broke apart ice dams along the sides of the road, pushing the flood waters into the basements of nearby homes.

Other residents suggested that town officials have delayed for years the initiation and completion of work necessary to clear underground sewage lines, exacerbating their flooding risks. They included Celeste Ribeiro Hewitt, a member of the town’s Citizens Advisory Commission on Climate, who has questioned the wisdom of the town’s fight with state officials over the 3A housing law, and suggested that Winthrop residents were “not ready” for another increase in their tax rates.

The Town Council, facing weeks of public complaints over the town’s handling of the storm, had a police officer in attendance at the meeting.