Southern N.B. communities left with flood and washout damage

Some New Brunswick communities and the provincial government are tallying up the damage and planning repair work following last week's heavy rain.

Several areas in the southern part of the province, including Salisbury and Sussex, saw flooding and road washouts.

In Salisbury, part of Route 106 remains closed after a culvert was overwhelmed and the road was undermined.

"Engineers are evaluating the pipe," said Mayor Robert Campbell.

They may be able to salvage it, Campbell said, or they may have to order something with a wider diameter — "big enough to handle the rainfalls now, and in the future as we start to see bigger and more significant weather events."

Thousands of vehicles a day normally use that road travelling to or from Moncton, said Campbell. 

He's asking drivers to slow down as they detour through a residential subdivision or to consider one of a few alternate routes.

Sixty or 70 kilometres an hour is too fast, he said, because there are many children in the area.

The mayor isn't sure yet how long the closure will last.

A similar issue with another culvert had part of Route 106 closed for a few weeks last fall, he said.

Campbell noted that a third culvert on that road and one on Reeder Road have been flagged as also vulnerable to washout in future heavy rainstorms.

There's a lot of aging provincial infrastructure in the area, he said, including a bridge that had to be reduced to one lane and an elementary school that has flooded twice in the past year.

The most recent storm also caused some damage to a municipal recreational trail, he added.

According to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure website other continuing highway closures caused by flood damage last week include:

• Route 114 in the Fundy Park area 
• the northern part of Route 625 near Route 8 in the Taxis River area 
• part of Route 645 between Tracy and Harvey 
• part of route 490 between McLean Settlement and Pine Ridge

In Sussex, town chief administrative officer Scott Hatcher said reports of damage were still coming in.

"There was a lot of water on Friday, let me tell you," he said.

When everything is tallied, Hatcher doesn't think repairs will be nearly as expensive as they were after the flooding in December 2020, which caused multimillion-dollar damage.

This time, a subdivision in the Parsons Brook area that isn't usually prone to flooding was affected by a jam of partially  frozen ice, Hatcher said.

"It was like trying to chase a slushy moving through the river," he said, describing efforts to break up the jam from along the banks.

Water seems to have spread across agricultural fields at spots where a dry stream bed is traversed by livestock during the warmer seasons, he said.

But he described the flooding as being more from groundwater than from overland flooding.

A number of basements were flooded, he said, some with "several feet" of water. He didn't have an estimate of how many.

Also listed as closed in recent days because of flood damage are:

• Russellville Road in the Miramichi district
• Hubley, Hillside and Carter Cross roads in the Moncton district
• Steve's, Other Lake, Plumweseep and Barrett roads in the Saint John district
• Peltoma Settlement and Tweedside roads in the Fredericton district

A department spokesperson said Transportation and Infrastructure is evaluating the damage caused by flooding last week.

"As water levels recede across the province, the department hopes to gain a better understanding of the damage," Jeremy Trevors said.