Karen Lin, Senior Photographer

Late last month, parts of western Connecticut were hit with historic rains. Flooding in towns such as Oxford and Southbury destroyed bridges, roads, homes and farms. 

New Haven was largely spared, but the Westville neighborhood experienced an unusual spike in rainfall. City leadership told the News that New Haven will continue flood mitigation efforts with financial support from the state and federal governments. 

“We’re dealing with the effects of climate change right now, and I think we’ve really started zeroing in on that in the wake of [Hurricanes] Irene and Sandy,” New Haven City Engineer Giovanni Zinn ’05 said. “With those two storms, and some of the funding that came through afterwards, we started really doing a lot of studies about flooding and how to mitigate it going forward. And now we’re at the point where we’re starting to implement a lot of these projects.”

The increase in global temperatures due to carbon emissions has increased the frequency of extreme weather in Connecticut, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Precipitation from heavy storms in Connecticut increased by 70 percent from 1958 to 2016. 

In last month’s storms, floodwaters washed out State Route 34, a video shows. Thousands of Connecticut residents reported power outages and transportation obstacles due to the flooding and heavy wind. 

Small business owners were hit especially hard by the recent flooding due to slowed transportation, destroyed roads and damaged infrastructure.

“There should be another fund or some sort of compensation to help all these businesses that have lost revenue,” Jacquelyn Mihalek, owner of ZarMi bra boutique in Oxford, said. “We have our lights on all day and we have the door open, but parking spaces are empty because people can’t get in here [because of the damage to roads].”

In response to the extreme weather, Connecticut legislators are highlighting the need for more ambitious emissions reduction targets on a federal and state level. Following the storms, state Rep. Joseph Gresko, green/energy coordinator for the legislature, pushed to reintroduce a climate bill in the 2025 legislative session which failed to pass last session. 

At Gov. Ned Lamont’s request, President Biden and the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a federal emergency declaration for Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven counties to direct federal emergency relief funds to those affected by the flooding. 

New Haven avoided the worst of the flooding, Zinn said, but the neighborhood of Westville received an extra inch of rainfall compared to downtown and western areas of the city which did experience some flooding. In the past few years, however, storms have led to flooding in the city, including on Yale’s campus. 

Zinn and his team said they are keeping a close eye on severe flooding in other parts of the state. The August floods represent an important reminder of the importance of mitigation efforts, he told the News. Zinn said that climate change is completely altering the infrastructure rule book.

“It’s a very stark reminder of how important these things are to address and to be prepared for,” Zinn said. “In some spots there, they said they got a one-in-one-thousand-year rain event. And it’s a sharp reminder that [when] you look up the chart and it says a one-in-one-thousand, it’s probably not a one-in-one-thousand-year rain event anymore.”

New Haven’s unique geography presents a twofold challenge when it comes to flooding, Zinn said: threats from the sea and from the land. 

With rising sea levels, storm surges and tropical storms, the threat of coastal flooding looms along New Haven’s extensive shoreline, Zinn said. Combined with more intense, more frequent rainfall from inland, New Haven’s drainage infrastructure — planned for lower sea levels and lower rainfall — faces a daunting challenge. 

In response, the city is investing in green stormwater management projects and requiring developers to do so as well, Zinn told the News. These projects “take advantage of New Haven’s sandy soil.” 

The city has also invested in coastline protection infrastructure, including a sand berm off Morris Cove to disperse intense waves before they approach civilian infrastructure. The project was designed to protect the topographic bowl around New Haven Tweed Airport, where the coastline is lower than the shoreline facing the open sound.

“We’ve been very successful in trying to leverage what we have locally and bringing a lot of funding from the state and federal government,” Zinn said. “We want to be ahead of the curve in recognizing the challenges that we have.” 

Zinn praised the city’s regional approach to flood mitigation, describing regular presentations from the city in other nearby municipalities facing similar challenges.

New Haven is working with the Army Corps of Engineers on a $160 million project for a flood wall, flood gates and pump station at Long Wharf. In 2022, the city also received a $35.8 million federal grant from FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program to build a stormwater tunnel from near Union Station to the harbor. 

Zinn estimated that major construction on the Long Wharf project would begin around 2026 and conclude around 2030.

Zinn encouraged New Haven residents to sign up for the city’s emergency alerts and avoid driving through floodwaters, a common refrain from public safety officials, but one which many still fail to heed.

“Don’t drive through flooded waters,” he said. “We see people every single time drive through flood waters. And I can’t tell you how many cars I’ve seen that got stuck and destroyed their engines.”

While a student at Yale, Zinn converted a Chevy truck to run on vegetable oil. He has been city engineer since 2014.