Essay on Lakeside Living

My yard smells like a toilet. Again.

My house, which sits at a low point on Cedar Street and Hall Street, was surrounded by 2 feet of water due to a heavy rainstorm last night around midnight. We were, luckily, not sleeping when the flooding began so we were able to wade out into the thigh-high waste water, along with a few other neighbors and make a futile attempt to get the sewer grates to drain the lake that formed at the intersection.

I had already called the city and fire department to warn about the imminent flood and was told by the fire department that they would, "try to get someone from the DPW down there."

As the water rose, covering the sidewalks then over the wheels of cars parked in the street and then submerging my entire yard in water, we frantically manned the pumps in our basement and moved our own cars to higher ground. The police and fire department sent down people to prevent cars from driving into "Lake Cedar" (although every time this happens we always get at least one reckless fool who tries to "gun it" through). Neighbors crept out and gazed at the flashing lights reflecting off the lake as it became clear that this was a "significant flood".

I began to hyperventilate.

Maybe it's due to PTSD or maybe I was just exhausted at the idea that I might, once again, have to replace everything in my basement due to flooding. The first time was a complete shock and I learned from that experience. In 1998, just two years after I had purchased my 2-family home in Somerville, I came home on a rainy Saturday afternoon and discovered that the entire street had disappeared below 3 feet of water and my basement was an indoor swimming pool. The smell was disgusting, because in an older city like Somerville, waste water is not separated from storm water. I spent nine hours with a hose bleaching my basement and the sidewalks and I considered myself lucky because it was Summer and I would have some time to replace the (2) furnaces, the (2) water heaters, the washer and the dryer that were lost. I put in a much more powerful pump. I went to the city meetings and witnessed a DPW official state that he was "unaware of any flooding issues on Cedar Street."

Then it happened again. And again. And Again. It has happened so many times that I have anxiety spikes whenever it begins to rain heavily, and I now have (3) pumps on hand. I no longer keep anything valuable inmy basement and I had my new furnaces mounted up against the ceiling in 2010 after the last basement "breach". To be fair, the city has been more proactive in the last few years and seems to be trying to find a solution to this problem. The response, however, is still leaving me feeling "left out in the rain".

This time I knew the routine. I called the city, I got out my plastic shovel, raincoat and cheap flip flops. Besides the police and fire department monitors, one lone DPW worker showed up and was the unlucky target of angry tirades by residents fed up with the stress of ruined yards and expensive, time-consuming cleanups.

Today, the day after, there is mud and debris everywhere with the threat of more rain. I have spent several hours hosing off my driveway and some of the sidewalks, shoveling wet leaves and talking with neighbors who discovered that their cars were dead. Not one city worker has come by to clear drains or clean the fecal mud from sidewalks. Maybe the city was unprepared because the Summer was very dry, maybe there was an issue with the drainage because of the construction going on just one clock "downstream" of Lake Cedar, maybe Mercury is retrograde. All I know is, this time six unlucky people had their cars totaled. This time, only one of my water heaters was affected.

And this time, like the other times, my yard smells like a toilet.