Flood of 2010

The flood of March 2010 was, in the words of Town Manager John C. Curran, "the most significant flooding events this town has experienced in decades." More than fourteen inches of rain fell that month, and the President declared a major disaster throughout Massachusetts. Boston Road was closed in two places: the Shawsheen overflowed it in Pinehurst at the Paul Newman Bridge (Boston Road Bridge over the Shawsheen River), and the Concord overflowed it in front of the Department of Public Works. Brown Street and Cook Street were closed, some traffic signals were affected, and the Whipple Road Bridge was damaged and closed until September 2012. The flood cost the town more than $176,000, besides about $30,000 for the extra trash collected after the spring rains, which FEMA repaid. Residents along the rivers told reporters in March 2011 that they kept boats and sandbags ready.

The town reports say little of the regional Mother's Day flood of May 2006, but in that fiscal year the highway division built an emergency access road between Dunham Road Extension and Wildcrest Avenue so that the Riverbank Terrace neighborhood could be reached in times of flooding.

The floods left lasting marks on the town's planning. The zoning by-law drew its Flood Plain Districts from 147 contour maps made by Green Engineering Affiliates from aerial photographs of May 1971, and from 1976 the Board of Appeals was to treat the one-hundred-year flood level as three feet below the mapped flood contour along the Concord River and one foot below it along the Shawsheen; the town later adopted the federal flood insurance rate maps, first issued for Billerica in 1980 and most recently revised in 2025. The fire station at 21 Lowell Street (Billerica Fire Station), built on the Broad Meadow, was placed west of the Concord so that the people across the river would have fire protection if the bridges were lost in a flood, and much of the low land along both rivers has since been kept as conservation land for flood storage.

Other floods on the two rivers: 1936, 1955, 1968, 1979, 1987.

People

• John C. Curran: Town Manager, who reported the March 2010 flood, the road closures and its cost of more than $176,000.

References

1. Billerica Annual Report for 2010, p. 128 (Town Manager: March 2010 flood, Boston Road, Brown and Cook Streets closed, cost over $176,000), p. 189 (FEMA reimbursement), p. 195 (over fourteen inches of rain).
2. Billerica Annual Report for 1976: zoning Article 34, Flood Plain Districts from 147 Green Engineering maps; 100-year flood level 3 feet (Concord) and 1 foot (Shawsheen) below the mapped contour.
3. Wikipedia, '2006 New England flood': the Mother's Day flood of May 2006; the Merrimack at Lowell expected more than eight feet above flood stage; Lowell's Francis Gate lowered.
4. WBZ-TV (CBS Boston), March 6, 2011, 'Billerica residents ready in case of flooding': flood warning on the Shawsheen and Concord; residents recall the 2010 flood, boats and sandbags.