Local DPW crews prepping for rainfall emergencies

Given the chance to choose, Saugus Department of Public Works Superintendent Joseph Attubato said he would take rain over snow any day, which is good since two inches of rain was said to be coming our way.The National Weather Service was predicting rain for Tuesday night followed by heavy rain for today with a total of about two inches expected.Attubato said that forecast sent his workers scurrying to try and patch potholes, clear catch basins and check out reports that at least one brook was clogged with debris.”We got a couple of calls about a brook on the Lynn Fells (Parkway),” he said. “We’ll get a lot of calls with the rain, some we can help but most we can’t.”Attubato said the majority of the calls are from homeowners getting water in their basements.”We’ll get calls all night but there’s not a lot we can do,” he said.Pumps at the main pump station were also given the once over and made ready pending the storm. Attubato said he was comfortable that the station would handle whatever amount of water flowed through it.Despite the pending storm and the damage that could come with flooding and wind, Attubato maintained he’d rather deal with rain.”Water you only have to put up with for a couple of days,” he said. “Snow you can plow it but it’s still there, we still have to deal with it. It’s going to cost either way though.”Lynn Department of Public Works Commissioner Jay Fink said he doesn’t think the substantial amount of rainfall predicted for the area will cause any damage.”Most of the snow cover has melted already with the warmer temperatures, so we don’t anticipate the rain to cause any problems,” he said.But localized street flooding could be a problem for the city if catch basins were not cleared prior the rainstorm.Executive Director of the Water & Sewer Department Dan O’Neill said the basins are continually cleared and will not obstruct water from filtering into the drains.”We’ve done our best to move water in preparation of the spring wet weather months, not just for the latest storm,” he said. “However, we will have crews monitoring and maintaining the brooks and ponds for the storm, but it’s not going to be anything that we can’t handle.”O’Neill said if the storm took a different turn at the last minute, there could be a problem.”We’re supposed to get about 1.4 inches over 24 hours, but if we were going to get 1.4 inches in two hours, then we would be in trouble,” he said.Still, O’Neill said his crew would be able to handle the storm regardless of the intensity.The North Shore’s most notorious city for flooding doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the rainstorm either, but Peabody’s Assistant Director of Public Services Richard Howcroft did have most of his crews prepping for the predicted inches of rain just incase.Howcroft said that all crews, with the exception of one, were out all day Tuesday cleaning catch basins, checking choke points and culverts, and making sure all debris is cleared from drains so things don’t get backed up.