By JOSEPH FITZGERALD

NORTH SMITHFIELD — The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has agreed to volunteer its services to help the town identify ways to alleviate flooding in the Cherry Brook neighborhood.

With no surplus town funds available, town officials had been scratching their heads trying to come up with a way to fund an engineering study of the area, a project estimated at around $44,000.
Learning of the town’s financial predicament, regional representatives of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps land owners and managers conserve soil, water and other natural resources, contacted Town Administrator Robert B. Lowe with an offer to volunteer its services through the agency’s conservation technical assistance program. The program provides voluntary conservation technical assistance to land-users, communities, units of state and local government, and other federal agencies in planning and implementing conservation systems.
Town Planner Michael Phillips said the agency has agreed to provide financial and technical assistance and will send in science and technical experts to work with local volunteers to collect data from culverts in the Cherry Brook neighborhood.
Residents living in the Cherry Brook neighborhood, including Lapre and Woodland Roads, have been complaining to town officials for years about basement and property flooding during heavy rains.
In February, the town went out to bid for an engineering study of Cherry Brook and Providence-based McGuire Group, Inc. emerged as the firm best qualified to take on the study. But at it’s meeting last month, the council was informed that the town didn’t have the money to pay for it.
At the time the bids were being solicited, there was some preliminary discussion that funds to pay for the study would come from the planning fund or the town’s surplus cash. But that was six months ago at the beginning of what would turn out to be one of the most difficult budget years in recent town history. Not only is the planning department budget depleted, but town officials are reluctant to take any more money from surplus because it has already dipped into those funds to help out the schools.
Several weeks ago, the council and school department worked out a plan to cover another $496,000 in budget funds requested for schools by using $224,000 in surplus school funding, the town’s $147,000 Northern Rhode Island Collaborative settlement award, and $122,000 in town surplus funding, which was added to the school budget to get the middle school open and operating.
Town officials are breathing a sigh of relief now that the Natural Resources Conservation Service has agreed to volunteer its services and at least get the ball rolling on a study of the Cherry Brook neighborhood.
“It may not provide all the data and information we’re looking for, but it will at least establish a base line of information,” said Phillips, adding the work will consist of gathering data relative to culvert sizes and watershed conditions.
A date as to when the NRCS employees will be able to get to North Smithfield has not been determined.