(The following story by Rick Clemenson appeared on the Albany Times-Union website on April 23.)
VOORHEESVILLE, N.Y. — Erica Peno loaded her kids onto a school bus Wednesday and was about to check her e-mail when she noticed a puddle in her living room. She went to grab a towel from the laundry room and noticed water on the floor there as well.
Then water began pouring out from underneath a couch, the floorboards and everywhere else she looked.
“I didn’t realize the severity,” Peno said. She frantically called her husband with the news.
“He told me to pick it up and I said: ‘No, no. This isn’t good,’ ” Peno said.
Less than 100 yards away on the other side of a high railway embankment, Barbara Flindt was encountering the same problem. Flindt’s yard was already saturated because of the nor’easter that dumped heavy rains and snow on the region last Sunday and Monday, but soon the water began pouring into her basement, faster than a sump pump could drain out.
Nearly a week after the storm, the Penos and Flindt are still pumping water out of their homes. A steady stream runs out the Penos’ front door and down a man-made trench built to funnel water away from the home.
Flindt, who is retired, has a football field-size lake in her front yard. But she is happy the pool of water on Foundry Road, where her home is located, has receded. Water on the road had been so deep, it blocked the only exit for her car.
The Penos blame freight carrier CSX for the flooding, saying the company clogged a culvert underneath the rail line when they performed repairs last summer. The railroad runs between their home and Flindt’s.
The couple has hired an attorney to help cope with the problem. Flindt doesn’t want to go down that path, but contends that CSX has failed to keep the railway clean of debris.
Dozens of discarded timbers are strewn along both sides of the embankment. The Penos believe stone spread along the railway last year is choking the culvert.
CSX representatives examined the area on Wednesday and took pictures, including the Penos’ house, according to Jeremy Peno, who did not speak with the men.
Bob Sullivan, a CSX spokesman, said the company is still investigating the incident, but it would offer assistance to the family if it bore some responsibility for the flooding.
“It’s certainly something we’re concerned about and if there’s something we need to resolve we’re going to get together with the families and get it resolved,” Sullivan said.
Jeremy Peno said town of New Scotland Water Department officials tested the water streaming out of his home for chlorine to see if the flooding could be attributed to a water main break in town, but the test came back negative.
The Penos and Flindt say their homeowners’ insurance will not cover the damages, which are likely to be high because of the extent of the flooding.
The Penos said they built a $90,000 addition to their house two years ago, but fear much of that work has been lost. New kitchen cabinets have begun to buckle and laminated flooring is curling as the water recedes and the room dries.
The couple and their three children have lived in the home — which is more than a century old and used to be a switchtender’s house — for seven years and say flooding has never been a problem until this year. Flindt said her house has never been flooded, either.
The Penos are staying at a relative’s house in Rotterdam for the interim and don’t know when they will be able to return. Flindt is sticking it out in her home, which she’s lived in since 1991.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Erica Peno said. “This is devastating.”