The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) is the water utility for a number of towns in the Hartford area. They are in the middle of a massive effort called the Clean Water Project, whose goal is to reduce the amount of untreated sewage that finds its way into local rivers and streams during storms when the sanitary sewer is overwhelmed by rain water.
The MDC has been doing a lot of work in the West End of Hartford related to the Clean Water Project over the past couple of years. The primary effort has been installing a storm drain that is separate from the sanitary sewer. Many of the local roads have been dug up on multiple occasions as they move through the various steps in the project.
Work has been completed on the block of North Beacon Street immediately north of Farmington Avenue. The top coat of pavement was put down this past week. This is exciting on a number of levels – most importantly because the new system is already having a positive impact on homeowners on the block. But it’s also nice to have the road put back together again.
The MDC is doing an experiment with permeable pavement along the curbs near Farmington Avenue (image above). Three different sections of permeable materials have been put down in the fifty feet leading up to storm drains. The idea is to allow some of the rain water to soak into the soil beneath the road rather than going directly, and immediately, into the storm drain. Water that doesn’t soak into the soil is picked up by perforated pipes below the surface and fed into the catch basin with a delay. By distributing the “storm surge” over time, the system should have more capacity and be able to handle larger storms.