How To Tame a Wayward River

Epsom resident Eric Orff stands on a 30 foot ledge overlooking an area called Cutter’s Pit in Epsom, formerly a huge sandpit.

The Suncook River used to curve sharply just to the north here, avoiding the pit, and then split in two to shape Bear Island. But all that changed on May 15th 2006.

Eric “the pit filled full of water then broke through right here, and once that occurred, the river immediately began cutting, cutting huge chunks of earth, flowing downstream and it cut all the way through in a matter of hours, within 12 hours the new Suncook River was formed here”

Orff, who’s lived in Epsom for 30 years, says while that was happening, it’s old two and a half mile channel on the west side of Bear Island was drying up.

Only two old mill dams stand there now.

“if we look below the dam, you’ll see a forest is growing in the old river bed, in three years since the flood, mother nature has reclaimed the Suncook River, with another 50 years it will be a forest, you won’t even recognize it was a river there.”

What happened to the Suncook River is called an avulsion, and geologists say they’re fairly common on meandering rivers like the Suncook.

But what makes the avulsion troubling is that its new path, which has created a sandy canyon through Cutter’s Pit, continues to move.

Since 2006, it has shifted more than 140 feet to the east, eroding everything in its path, and sending massive amounts of dirt, sand and even trees downstream.

River Restoration Supervisor Steve Landry, with the Department of Environmental Services, says the new channel is a mile and a half shorter, its slope is steeper and it moves at a much higher velocity.

“that shortening of the river and creating that steep steep slope, made the Suncook river need to downcut in the channel bed.”

It’s called headcutting, and it causes a river’s banks to erode upstream.

“The effects of that are felt all the way up to the Route 4 bridge, not just the main stem of the Suncook, but Leighton Brook, the little Suncook River and all side tributaries associated with the Suncook.”

(creek sounds)

This is the mouth of Leighton Brook… Before the floods, it was almost narrow enough to jump across, now it’s almost 90 feet wide.

Landry squats down and sticks his hand in a crack in the ground near the brook’s banks.

“this cleave in the ground, its almost like an earthquake fissure, you can stick your hand in it, this whole piece of bank is going to drop off”

Further upstream, Leighton Brook passes through a subdivision and under Black Hall Road.

Resident Eric Orff says that the erosion has wiped away much of the lawn of one house.

“Right next to Black Hall Road the whole section of his lawn is gone and the road is now threatened..this is a huge ditch now so if this keeps cutting back Black Hall Road will be severed as well as the town’s water supply, there’s a water line that runs under there, so that would be undercut, there’s tremendous financial risks to what’s happening here.”

If that weren’t enough of a problem, just within the last few months, the main stem of the Suncook cut a new path, a new avulsion, this time through Round Pond, further downstream.

(water) 10:46

Landry says the Suncook is still looking for stable ground.

“the river is still trying to find the path of least resistance, essentially trying to get back to a slope and elevation that’s conducive to carrying the flow and moving sediment and the Suncook River found Round Pond and now it’s created the outlet we’re looking at right in front of us here.”

Environmental engineering consultants actually predicted this second avulsion in a study completed for DES last year.

That study found that the best way to handle the Suncook’s destruction is to stabilize the river.

The four million dollar project would first stop the erosion from creeping northward.

The project also calls for dredging further downstream of the new channel, near Round Pond.

So much sand and silt has built up it’s making the river too shallow and the water easily overflows its banks.

Pembroke resident Tom Beaumeister lives along the Suncook, downstream.

“clay is suffocating the river banks, choking off the vegetation that’s holding the river banks in place, see that light colored area, that used to be about eight or nine feet deep, what this is now is a sandbar.”

Beaumeister has had to remove silt, raise his house six feet, and replace his septic field and yard; he says it has cost him more than ten thousand dollars.

Upstream, Epsom resident and dairy farmer Steward Yeaton says the river’s instability has cost him close to $100,000.

Thousands of yards of silt ended up damaging 40 acres of his cropland in the first flood.

He repaired it only to get flooded again – he’s now given up on about 15 acres.

“it looks like wasteland right now, we could put some heavy equipment out there and strip it off again and get that junk off the fields and off the land but there’s just no way we’re going to invest thousands of dollars into it right now, try to stabilize it and then have it happen again.”

The Suncook oxbows near his property, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he loses more of his land to the rushing water in the new few years.

Resident Tom Beaumeister says he’s lost his patience waiting for the state to fix the problem.

“the state and DES did nothing to stabilize the area up there, we had a worse flood 11 months later in April of 2007, with less rainfall, the water was 28 inches higher in my home, and again three or four feet covering the entire property.”

Beaumeister blames the state and DES for what happened to the Suncook.

The state owned the sandpit where the water forced its way through and Beaumeister says the state excavated too much of the pit.

He also believes that DES’s stabilization plan won’t work.

“ you want to try to stabilize this, this is nuts!”

Beaumiester stands at the ledge of Cutter’s Pit...the banks beneath him are eroding, massive trees have fallen down.

“These trees were standing a couple of months ago, give it a heavy rain, that chunk’s gone it’s just the most unstable material there is to try to stabilize, and look at this, this 40 foot wall is collapsing in as we’re talking.”

Like many residents affected by the evolving river, he wants to see the river put back to its original path, something DES officials ruled out because of cost and liability.

“The old abandoned channel bed the bottom elevation of that channel is now probably 15 or 16 feet higher than the new Suncook River channel bed, so if you can imagine trying to make up that elevation gain, would be a significant engineering feat and require the construction of even more dams.”

Both DES and geologists who have studied what happened during the Mother’s Day floods, say the existing dams on the old channel were also responsible for the avulsion.

DES’s Steve Landry says he understands the frustration for downstream homeowners.

But he adds DES has not dragged its feet nor ignored the problem.

In three years, officials studied the problem, drew up designs and alternatives, received approval and applied for funding.

Funding is where they fell short.

DES and town officials applied for a four million dollar grant from FEMA, only to get rejected just a few weeks ago.

“we couldn’t demonstrate a significant enough economic benefit for FEMA to invest four million dollars into the Suncook River.”

Landry says compared to other flooding disasters around the country, the Suncook poses only a small financial risk.

DES has asked for funding help from both Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Congressman Paul Hodes.

And there’s a possibility for another grant from FEMA.

But if DES had received the money, construction would likely have started next year.

Now, it’s back to a waiting game...and sand and sediment will continue to move downstream for years.