RUMFORD — The rainstorm that flooded the southern part of the state Wednesday night caused only minimal damage in the River Valley, Public Works Superintendent Andy Russell said Thursday.
According to the National Weather Service in Gray, the Portland Jetport received nearly 6½ inches of rain while Auburn and Lewiston each recorded about 4½ inches.
“We did a lot better than Southern Maine,” Norman Haggan, Maine Department of Transportation regional manager in Dixfield, said. “We were lucky. If we had had that 6½ inches, it would have been bad.”
According to the U.S. Geological Survey website, of the Androscoggin River Basin precipitation totals for the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. Thursday, Rumford received 1.73 inches of rain and Rangeley 0.79 inches.
Haggan’s and Russell’s crews are still repairing massive damage to area roads caused by a storm July 2 that dropped up to 6 inches of rain in an hour or two.
Russell said damage estimates from that storm could range between $120,000 to $140,000.
Haggan said Wednesday night’s heavy rains only caused debris to plug a small culvert on South Rumford Road, causing minor erosion when water overran the road.
It was near MDOT’s much bigger project just beyond Hall Hill Road, where flash flooding from the July 2 storm washed out that road and gouged a 12- to 14-foot hole in South Rumford Road, exposing sewer and gas lines.
The Androscoggin River from Rumford to Dixfield was a chocolate brown color from sediment that Haggan said he believes was flushed down from the river’s watershed in New Hampshire.
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- The area around a culvert on South Rumford Road near the former Mount Zircon Spring Water Co. bottling plant in Rumford washed out after the other end of the culvert got clogged in heavy rain Wednesday night, pushing water over the road.
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