On the eve of July 10, 2023, Piyush Labhsetwar, like many farmers in the Pioneer Valley region of Massachusetts, went to sleep anticipating rain. But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw the next morning, when he checked the online water gauge for the Mill River, a tributary of the Connecticut River that runs along Grow Food Northampton’s 121-acre community farm. 

“[The] water level was shooting straight up,” he recalled. “This doesn’t look good.” 

He drove to the farm and found one of the incoming roads blocked by police. The river had jumped its banks and the bridge to cross it was underwater. He found another place to cross. 

“Part of the farm had turned into the river. And it was not just, you know, still water,” he said. “It was like a flowing river, taking part of the farm.”  

On the same day, a man was rescued from his car in a park that the Mill River had overtaken nearby. Six miles north in Williamsburg, Meekin Brook jumped its banks and rushed through the parking lot of O’Brien’s Auto Works. In Greenfield alone,142,290 gallons of untreated sewage were released into the Connecticut and Deerfield Rivers. And culverts and roads were washed out up and down the valley.  

That region was hit so hard that season that the Massachusetts State Legislature appropriated $20 million to reimburse farmers for lost revenue and $15 million for municipalities impacted by storms and disasters. 

Over the past six decades, the Northeast has seen a 60 percent increase in precipitation during the top 1 percent heaviest rain days. By 2050, severe floods in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts that were expected to happen once every 100 years will be three times more likely to occur. But the region faces multiple obstacles addressing these unfolding impacts of climate change. Uneven distribution of resources across municipalities leaves some towns less equipped to plan for and respond to disasters — and each town addresses flooding in its own silo, through town-specific comprehensive plans and infrastructure upgrades. Non-profits, planning agencies, and government officials are advocating for more coordination, including ambitious state and federal legislation that would corral the watershed community together. They say that what happens upstream affects those downstream and that everyone needs support.  

“You have communities that are trying to deal with this on their own, which I understand, and at the same time, we need to think about it as a full ecosystem,” said Kimberly Robinson, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), the designated regional planning body for 43 cities and towns in Hampden and Hampshire county.  

Massachusetts State Senator Jo Comerford echoes the sentiment: “The river has to be seen as an entity in its whole self. … Even as municipalities protect themselves, which of course they have a right to do, … we need a coordinating body to make sure that we’re talking to each other.” 

Floodplains have been a site of civilization throughout human history. Joseph Graveline, advisor for the Nolumbeka Project, a northeastern tribal heritage preservation organization, points out that for millennia Indigenous people “chose to live by the river, understanding that it would flood from time to time and that they could deal with it quite nicely and move right back onto the land again afterwards.” When the river flooded, it left nutrients and silt in its wake, which was ideal for farming.  

“They saw pure organic material coming down the river. Beautiful stuff,” he said.  

But colonization and industrialization dramatically changed life along the river, with the first European settlements in the 1600s, the first dam construction in the late 1700s, the industrial revolution in the 1800s, and hydroelectric power and the agricultural revolution in the 1900s. The last four hundred years have led to a new relationship with the river for most people, and with the addition of climate change, what was once manageable has become a liability.  

During the July 10 flood, Joe Czajkowski, whose Hadley farm grows 400 acres of fruit and vegetables, lost over $1 million dollars in crops — roughly a quarter of anticipated revenue for that year. This was food that was destined for local schools, universities, and grocery stores. Some of the crops were lost outright, but some were unsellable because they’d made contact with river water, which can expose crops to manure from upstream farms, sewage, agricultural chemicals, fuel, heavy metals, and microbial pathogens, according to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR).

Four days after the flooding, MDAR issued a guide that “strongly” discouraged farmers from replanting crops that are commonly eaten raw, like salad greens, in river flooded fields within that season.  

“Certain crops that live in the soil, like carrots, [we] might have been able to plant over again,” Czajkowski said. “But I didn’t think it would be smart to put them in the soil and try for a second crop or second planting, because who knows what’s in that soil from the flood waters?” 

Graveline has the same concerns, and questions whether his plan to grow blueberries on his land in Northfield makes sense. During Hurricane Irene, he watched “propane tanks floating down river at the speed of a speed boat,” he said. “I saw refrigerators … just everything you can imagine floating down that river. … We just don’t know what the impact is going to be short term, medium term or long term to these kind[s] of chemicals coming onto the land.” 

Czajkowski says that even crops out of the river’s way were inundated with rainwater. He lost more than half of his cucurbits — crops like cucumbers, squash, and peppers — to a moisture-loving soil borne pathogen called PCap, Phytophthora capsici. It’s a pernicious disease that thrives in soils saturated with water and causes fruit rot, rapid wilting, and death in many vegetables. Its “swimming spores” can travel a great distance within the soil, contaminating other fields. It also produces long-lived spores that can survive underground for years.  

The July 10 flood also came at an unexpected time. Labhsetwar and many others pointed out that historically, flooding in this region is expected in the spring because of snow and ice melt, and the predictability helped. 

“[Farmers] would not disturb the land or till the land until that happens. So they could plan around it, because it was a more predictable event. But now with climate change, the floods are happening very erratically.” 

Labhsetwar said 2023 was “a crazy year” at Grow Food Northampton, with two floods in July and an even more surprising one in December. 

Nearly 60 percent of the state’s agricultural output is in the Connecticut River watershed, leaving many concerned about the impact of climate change and its myriad ripple effects, including diseased crops, on food security. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Environment and Affairs (EEA) estimates an 8 percent decline in key commodity crops like barley, corn, cotton, hay, potatoes, rice, sorghum, soybeans, and wheat by 2030, and a 20 percent decline by 2070.  

“Impacts of climate change, whether that is droughts or flooding, have a larger impact on our ability as a Commonwealth to be resilient,” said Robinson. 

In addition to food security, these weather events take a toll on small businesses, homes, and infrastructure. The 2022 Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment cited “urgent climate impacts” in the Connecticut River watershed, many of which were seen on July 10 and some which are predicted to unfold: damage to inland buildings from heavy rainfall, overwhelmed drainage systems, and a reduced property tax base due to inland flood risk. 

Todd O’Brien, owner of O’Brien’s Auto Works in Williamsburg, took out a loan to replace over $80,000 in equipment that was damaged when water Meekin Brook forced its way under the door of his garage, as well as through a fissure in the concrete floor, resulting in what he described as a “geyser.” His landlord had to replace the exterior wall that had been holding back the river.  

O’Brien said insurance wouldn’t cover his equipment because the flood was “an act of god.”

“We [had to] just sweep all that was left from the water and try to put our lives back together,” he said.  

In Northampton, an overflowing stream coupled with stormwater on roads led to the pooling of water in a low-lying neighborhood and pushed water into the first floors of single-family homes.  

Carolyn Misch, the city’s director of Planning and Sustainability, said that events like the July 10 flood block access points to entire neighborhoods. Even before that summer, her department was concerned about the “people who are most vulnerable and therefore have very tenuous housing situations … [who] might be living in the lowest lying areas,” she said. Planning for climate-related emergencies for those populations is a top priority moving forward.  

In November of 2024, a partnership of 16 municipalities, 13 legislators, and two regional planning agencies, including PVPC, sent a letter to EEA Secretary Rebecca Pepper urging the administration to include a $100 million fund dedicated to supporting the watershed’s health and resilience in the forthcoming environmental bond bill.  

The letter noted that much of the region’s flood control infrastructure — like the Hatfield Dike — was built in the 1930s and 1940s, and while it has “protected the region from catastrophic flooding” it is “not equal to the ravages of climate change.”  

Comerford, one of the letter’s signatories, told CommonWealth Beacon that she hopes the fund can also address the region’s wastewater treatment challenges. 

“We have many water sewer problems on the Connecticut – aging infrastructure that sends sewage into the river in huge quantities these days,” Comerford told CommonWealth Beacon. “So [we need] everything from flood control to water sewer repair, so that not only is the water not flooding farm fields and municipalities, but when it floods, it’s not then tainted with sewage.”  

Robinson, also a signatory, has seen communities struggle under the weight of disaster recovery, including some that have very few paid staff and are “inundated” with calls during weather events.  

“[There is] tremendous pressure on local governance,” said Robinson. “All those pressure points became really apparent” during July of 2023, when some communities had no paid staff other than a director of public works, if that, to respond.  

Comferford hopes the money would directly go to communities that need to upgrade infrastructure but would also be used to create a coordinating body so that towns are not undermining each other’s efforts.  

“If one municipality upstream hardens its infrastructure, puts up a big retaining wall, it’s going to change the river,” she said. “If we do this in Fairfield, what happens to Hadley and Hatfield, or Northampton? … We need that kind of coordination.” 

In an email to CommonWealth Beacon, Danielle Burney, a spokesperson for EEA said, “The Connecticut River Watershed, along with each of Massachusetts’ rivers, is on the frontlines of climate change, experiencing historic flooding that has devastated farmland, homes, and businesses.” In reference to the $100 million requested in the November 2024 letter, she said “We are currently developing an environmental bond bill to be filed later this spring. We look forward to sharing the significant investments that these critical authorizations will support.” 

The Connecticut River Partnership, a network of advocacy organizations that includes PVPC and the Connecticut River Conservancy, is also looking to the federal government for support. In July 2023, in response to the partnership’s advocacy, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, introduced S.2660, the Connecticut River Partnership Act, to establish a program for coordinating “restoration and protection” activities among federal, tribal, state, local, and regional entities and conservation partners throughout the watershed. (Shaheen’s office along with the Connecticut River Partnership was working on the bill before the flood, but after the devastation the importance of the bill became more apparent, said a staffer.) Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren were two of six co-sponsors, all of whom were Democrats and who represented Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The bill did not make it out of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in 2023, but Sen. Shaheen will reintroduce it this legislative cycle, said one of her staffers. The bill was also introduced in the House of Representatives with eight cosponsors, and it did not make it out of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. 

While developed before the July 10 flooding, the goals of the bill included creating “water management for volume and flood damage mitigation improvements to benefit fish and wildlife habitat” and advancing “the use of nature-based solutions to maximize the resilience of communities, natural systems, and habitats under changing sea levels, storm risks, and watershed conditions.” 

In the meantime, cities and towns are doing much of this work on their own with support from grants and groups like PVPC. PVPC has helped 27 municipalities develop Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) plans, which include short- and long-term planning for flood events. Andrew Levine, Hatfield’s town administrator, said a big focus of Hatfield’s plan is “making room for the river,” which, in future flood scenarios, might encroach on the town’s infrastructure and services.  

“Our town facilities, much of our infrastructure, and our emergency response departments, are all within the new floodplain, and that creates some risks to us for sure that we’re trying to find ways to mitigate,” said Levine. 

Until last year, when an engineering team made updated floodplain maps based on preliminary FEMA data and river flow projections by University of Massachusetts, Hatfield only had access to FEMA maps from the 1970s, which do not reflect the river’s new reality under climate change.  

Calculated by the engineers, the “new floodplain” is a more accurate representation of the distance the overflow of the river is expected to reach in major flood events. Hatfield’s flood management recommendations are based on scenarios in which much of its town center could be three to four feet under water in a 100-year flood — a flood that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any year.  

In addition to long term considerations like moving emergency services, the town hall, and the senior center to higher land, the town plan’s short-term recommendations include inventorying and assessing culverts for upgrades.  

“Everything is costly, but so is not mitigating disaster,” said Diana Szynal, chair of the Hatfield select board. 

Szynal said that as a small town with only a 3-person essentially-volunteer select board, they were grateful to have the support of PVPC in making their plan because “from our perspective … that’s a lot of work.”  

Hatfield is just one town, and not all municipalities have the capacity to create customized forecasts to guide their planning.   

“We’ve been cobbling together resources because we don’t have what we need,” said Patty Gambarini, PVPC’s chief environment planner.  

Labhsetwar, the pawpaw farmer who since the flood has become the farm and land stewardship manager at Grow Food Northampton, says that accurate maps are also important if you want to site agriculture based on a climate adaptive approach. In 2023, two of the vegetable farms that Grow Food Northampton leased land to were in the lowest lying portion of the property. One farm moved, and Grow Food Northampton decided not to renew the lease of the other. Grow Food Northampton is considering leasing the most vulnerable plots to fruit and nut tree growers.   

Another challenge is that some towns are using precipitation data from the 1950’s to inform development projects and aren’t accurately accounting for stormwater runoff – a major factor that affects flooding. In 2023, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection issued new proposed regulations for the Wetlands Protection Act, including a new stormwater handbook that would require municipalities to manage stormwater based on updated precipitation data. MassDEP officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But, according to the agency’s website, changes should be finalized this spring. 

“Regulation on new development and redevelopment projects need to be accounting for current and potentially future rainfall to reduce risk. And relying on old rainfall data in calculations is no longer suitable,” said Gambarini.  

In addition to updating regulations, towns need to be able to review projects to those standards and enforce those regulations. PVPC says this is difficult in itself, given how many towns don’t have professional staff. 

 “They just don’t have the capacity,” said Ken Comia, PVPC’s deputy director of land use and environment.  

Gambarini says that while updated building codes are important, because they ensure that new development takes more responsibility for onsite management of stormwater, one of the most significant things a region can do is protect nature’s pre-existing systems for water absorption, like wetlands.  

In a city version of that philosophy, Northampton received funding to look at five different places around the city where they could install green infrastructure, which is a way of mimicking natural processes for managing stormwater. Misch said the goal is to turn hard infrastructure, like paved areas, into “natural flood plains.” Two sites were at schools that would direct stormwater into bioswales to help prevent downstream flooding. The city now has construction designs for these projects and will continue to look for funding to implement them.  

During the summer of 2023, Labhsetwar was leasing one third of an acre in the lowest lying portion of the farm. He’d picked that site because he was growing pawpaws — a fruit tree adapted to floodplains — and perennial grains as part of an experiment in resilient agriculture. On July 10, the 5-foot tree tubes were fully under water. But in the following weeks, the baby trees were doing just fine. And he was glad to see that the wheat bounced back the next year. 

“This is the experiment I planned for,” he’d thought.  

He argues that one of the benefits of growing trees in floodplains is that the crop is less likely to be contaminated by river water than low-lying vegetables. But changing a society’s approach to agriculture and to eating habits is “slow work.” 

“It is like really figuring out what tree crops will work in your land, and also for people to be able to use that kind of food,” he said.  

Other slow work is repairing parts of the river that have been impacted by erosion. The Connecticut River Conservancy uses root wad installations to stabilize carved out riverbends, which involves inserting a tree with a big root wad into the riverbank so that the root structure slows down that water. 

“One of the things humanity has been very good at is building right up to the edge of the water,” said Rebecca Todd, executive director of the Connecticut River Conservancy.  

“We’ve all seen those steep creek walls that slump because the river comes whooshing around the corner,” she said. “So what we are trying to do is to revegetate some of the riparian corridors to help stabilize the area.” 

In the coming weeks, Gambarini will be running a round table through the MVP grant program to engage in conversations across the watershed and “accelerate” what municipalities can accomplish together. The round table will include “flood savvy technical people” from municipalities all along the Connecticut River in Massachusetts.  

Comia echoes the importance of applying technical knowledge to planning. 

“My mantra as an urban planner is building the capacity of the people that are making decisions,“ he said. “At the end of the day, my hope is that [these towns] are making decisions based on the best information that’s out there, even if it is scary.”