By Dan O’Brien

A head-on crash has killed a Concord couple that was reportedly active in the fight against AIDS and seriously injured an Epsom school teacher.

Police say a pickup truck traveling southbound on Route 3A crossed the center line near Hidden Ranch Drive and slammed into a sport utility vehicle on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at about 12:15 p.m.

The truck driver and his wife, Sherman Ordway, 64, and Bridget Ordway, 50, of Concord, were both killed. The SUV driver was identified as Cynthia Damelio, 50, of Concord, who teaches third grade at the Epsom Central School. Damelio’s dog was rescued from her vehicle by firefighters.

Police say Sherman Ordway likely suffered a medical episode during the accident.

A doctor was traveling in the vehicle behind the Ordways and told police Ordway slumped over the wheel before his car veered into oncoming traffic.

Patrick Connors, principal of the Epsom Central School, says Damelio has taught at the school for more than 20 years. A retired teacher is teaching Damelio’s class until she returns to work, which could take months.

“She’s strong-willed and she’ll pull through,” Connors said. “It’s just going to take time.”

Connors says Damelio’s students were told about the crash before a letter was sent home. He said guidance councilors are available to answer any questions students might have.

The Ordways were active in volunteer groups to help people infected with AIDS, according to a published report.

By Kathleen Bailey

George and Karen Reese are expecting a crowd for Thanksgiving this year. How many? Try 100 -- and there’s room for more.

The Reeses and their two sons, Ian and Sean, will host their fifth annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner Thanksgiving Day in the Epsom Fire Hall. The meal is open to anyone in the Greater Concord area -- or the state -- who can’t afford the meal or doesn’t want to be alone.

It was a chilly November afternoon, and the last of the leaves fell from trees outside her window as Karen Reese relaxed at her dining room table. Laundry tumbled in a dryer, chili simmered on the stove, and the men of her family came in from hunting. It was a comfortable domestic scene -- but in word and deed, Reese made it clear that she knows others aren’t as fortunate.

Reese, a native of Epsom, had had the idea for a free Thanksgiving for years before she started hers in 2004.

“It was embedded in me,” she said, “to reach out to people in need.”

Five years ago, she told George, “It’s time.”

They had 10 helpers and five “guests” that first year, Reese recalled. The Reeses prepared the majority of the food. Though the turnout was small, Reese and her family walked away from that first dinner “knowing it was good.”

Though the dinner is open to anyone, any faith or no faith, the Reeses bring a Christian perspective to their work. They have established Reese Family Ministries, an outreach to couples and families, and they also have their own praise and worship band.

Members of Higher Ground Ministries in Barnstead, they enlist church members to help. Volunteers come from other churches or are family or friends. Last year they had 25 volunteers. She’s organized her regular volunteers into a corps including a kitchen coordinator, food coordinator, and “take-home” coordinator.

Yes, there are leftovers, Reese said with a smile.

The food is all donated now, and Reese doesn’t cut up so much as a carrot stick. She’s too busy greeting people, filling holes in the volunteer corps, and singing onstage with the family band.

They also work. Several volunteers are whole families, and the little ones put on rubber gloves and help out. While she doesn’t let them near any of the hot food or knives, Reese said they can pass out rolls or pie slices -- and are delighted to do it.

Other young people work the dinner to fulfill school community service requirements, she said. And one mom actually called her to ask if her daughter could serve. “She told me, ‘I want my daughter to know what it’s like -- she has everything,” Reese recalled.

The menu hasn’t changed much from 2004. Instead of three turkeys, her volunteer cooks will roast seven this year. There’s stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls, squash, corn, peas, carrots, and pies. If someone wants to make a “gourmet” item, she lets them, she said, but asks them to go easy on the salt, sugar and fat.

“We try to keep the menu healthy,” she said.

This year she’s expecting the same number of guests, or more, because of the economy. But her volunteers and donors have stepped up their efforts, and she already has seven 20-pound turkeys and most of the trimmings. She’s all stocked for paper goods and supplies, she said. A few more vegetable dishes might be nice, but as of Nov. 24, she’s ready to go.

“It’s not me, it’s God,” she said.

Why do they do it?

“We’ve been there, in need, ourselves,” Reese said. “People need to know hope, that they’re not alone, that other people have gone through it. That’s our message -- you’re not alone.”

She added, “We do a lot of praying before each dinner. We don’t want anyone to stay away because of pride.”

And she’ll continue to take her inspiration from Scripture, especially Matthew 25:35-40. In the waning afternoon light, Reese put on her glasses to read, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.” The dinner is Thursday, Nov. 25, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. “or whenever we get done,” Reese said. The dinner is free and the public is welcome. To volunteer or donate, call her at 736-9954.

By Kathleen Bailey

The Department of Revenue Administration has set Epsom’s tax rate for 2009. Residents can expect to see an increase of 39 cents per $1,000, in a year where the town portion of the bill went up and the school portion went down.

Epsom’s current rate is $17.35 per $1,000 of taxable property. It breaks down into $2.60, town portion; $2.51, county; $10.09, local school; and $2.15, state school portion.

The new rate, set Oct. 15 by the Department of Revenue Administration, is $17.74 per $1,000. This breaks down into $4.03, town share; $2.41, county; $9.13, local school; and $2.17, state school portion.

The Epsom School District increased its revenues this past year, and even turned approximately $94,000 back to the town, financial adminstrator Nancy Wheeler said.

There are “a couple of reasons” the town portion went up, according to Wheeler. First, the town passed a budget in March 2009, after three years of being on a default budget. The total appropriations went up $207,000 when the operating budget was voted in, she said.

In addition, Wheeler said, the town did not use any surplus funds to mitigate taxes. In previous years Epsom would use its undesignated fund balance to offset taxes, but this year, she said, “there wasn’t that much to play with.” The Department of Revenue Administration requires that a certain amount be left in the fund, she said.

Epsom also saw a decrease in its anticipated revenues, which are down by $142,500, Wheeler said. These include car registrations, dog licenses, building permits, the land use change tax, the timber tax, and other licenses, permits and fees. A decrease in auto registrations was responsible for the biggest part of the drop, she said.

The town also saw reduced revenue from state highway block grants and the rooms and meals tax, and saw state “shared revenue” completely eliminated. Peter Aubrey, business manager for School Administrative Unit 53, credited the lower school portion to two factors.

First, he said, the town’s assessed value went up by $6 million in 2009. Second, he said, the school district actually returned $94,955 to the town to help offset taxes.

This was the result of good budgeting by Epsom Central School Principal Patrick Connor, he said.

“The principal is very frugal and runs a tight ship,” Aubrey said.

By KATHLEEN D. BAILEY

The town of Epsom has completed its paperwork for a grant which Department of Environmental Services river specialist Steve Landry said will put the town and the Suncook River on a better course following the “Mother’s Day Flood” of 2006.

The Suncook River, which has its headwaters in Alton and Gilmanton, changed its course during the 2006 flood in an action river experts call an “avulsion.”

The avulsion, the largest event of its kind in New Hampshire history, affected businesses and homes in Epsom, Allenstown and Pembroke. It’s too big a problem for the towns or the state to address on their own, and Landry, colleague Steve Couture and the Epsom selectmen have been working to find funding.

The Suncook, a tributary of the Merrimack River, rose to flood level May 16, 2006. Before that time, it split around the northwest and southeast sides of Bear Island. The river veered to the southeast, then broke through an active gravel pit, a half mile to the east and continues to move east, eroding land. Since 2006, it has moved 140 feet to the east, affecting property and property values along its route.

Selectman Keith Cota, a professional engineer who is working with Landry and Couture, said Monday, Sept. 28, that Epsom has done its part of the paperwork and returned the application to the local office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

DES and the town will pursue two grants, Landry said. The first, an Emergency Management Progress grant, will be for $400,000 for designing the project and the permitting process. There will be no cost, not even a grant match, to Epsom or any of the towns affected, Landry emphasized. The “match” will come from the state of New Hampshire, which will provide in-kind services to complete the design and permit process.

The current plan calls for in-stream structures such as rock veins and rock weirs to control erosion, and culverts to release pressure, Landry said. There will also be new snowmobile crossings at Layton Brook and the Little Suncook River, he said. The culverts will give the “new” Suncook access to a flood plain, he said.

When the first grant is completed, Landry, Couture and the town will apply to FEMA for a second grant. While the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant was rejected last year, the stakeholders hope that a repackaged request, including a lower bottom line, will succeed this time. Last year’s request was for $5 million for design, permitting and construction, and was denied.

“Now we’re cutting out a half million of that, which is funding from the first grant,” Landry said. “We’ve also changed the scope of the project, and won’t do so much channel dredging downstream. That was $1 million by itself.”

The new, scaled-down grant request will be “more attractive” to FEMA, Landry said. In addition to the first grant proposal, Landry and Couture have also drafted a request for qualifications for firms to do the work should the grant be accepted. The application will be filed through Dick Verville of New Hampshire Emergency Planning, who manages the FEMA grant programs for New Hampshire, Landry said.

“We’ll see where this goes,” Cota said of the first grant. “I’m a little disappointed at the slowness of the process,” he added. “This is very important -- it affects three communities.”

Selectmen Chairman Bob Blodgett hopes the second time will be the charm.

“It’s eroded a lot of property,” he said of the wayward river. “Every time we get a severe rainstorm, it eats at even more of the land. Once we get the grants, we hope that will stabilize it.”

When is a stone wall not a stone wall, what do you do about it, and who pays?

The town of Epsom is grappling with this issue after long-time residents Edward and Glenna Nutter alleged that DBU, a construction firm hired by the town to repair roads after last summer’s tornado, damaged the historic stone wall on their property. While Road Agent Gordon Ellis and his crew repaired the wall, the Nutters are “going to the wall” for it, insisting that only the original stones will maintain the integrity and “iconic nature” of their wall.

But selectmen contend that Nutter does not have sufficient proof that the town is at fault, and they also say it is illegal for the town to pay to repair private property. At a recent selectmen’s meeting, the Nutters said they will pursue legal action against the town.

Wall woes
According to Ed Nutter, 600 feet of the wall “disappeared” when DBU, a local firm owned by Adam Towne, repaved Center Hill Road after the tornado. The road repair happened a year ago this past July. At the time, he brought the issue to Ellis and Towne’s foreman, saying, “We want our wall back.”

After Nutter complained to the town, Ellis and his crew did put new rocks on top of investigationwhat was left of the old wall. The new rocks were donated by DBU and put in by Ellis at the town’s expense. But that’s the problem, according to Nutter: they put “gravel rocks” instead of the old-fashioned stone, and you can see the difference, according to him.

“They are little round stones, horrible looking. It’s a makeshift stone wall,” Nutter insisted.

A year ago, he wrote a letter to the town saying he was unsatisfied with the new wall. The town asked for photos and documentation, which he supplied. He also met with selectmen and Ellis for a site walk Aug. 1 of this year.

Nutter’s attorney, Todd Fahey, said the original wall is a “classic, iconic” New England stone wall.

“The town was good enough to put the wall back,” he said, adding, “But it’s not the wall he lost.” Like a rolling stone Selectmen don’t think the town is at fault, and contend that a “100-year flood” could have been responsible. In a recent meeting with the Nutters and Fahey, they pointed out that the wall could have been damaged by the force of the April 2007 flood.

“I have seen a lot of stones moved in a river,” Selectman Keith Cota, a civil engineer, pointed out. “A lot of water can move good-sized stones.”

When Nutter and Fahey said they had a good idea who had taken the stones, Chairman Bob Blodgett countered, “If you did not see them do it, how can you tell me who did it?”

“I think I know where they are, but I don’t have proof,” Nutter said.

He later said that he had people willing to “come forward” as to the location of the stones.

Adam Towne of DBU donated the replacement stones, Cota said, and maintains that his staff did not take the original stones.

Nutter and Fahey shared photos from the storm event, allegedly showing that the wall was still there in April 2007. Nutter also said neighbors walked along the wall while they were out inspecting storm damage. But selectmen argued that the smaller or “top” stones could still have been moved, with Cota saying, “The ‘act of God’ in 2007 did quite a bit of damage. It removed stumps -- it could have also removed stones.”

Selectmen also contend that it’s not necessarily the town’s responsibility to restore private property.

”Is there justification for spending public funds for something someone percieves as damaged?” Cota asked. And Selectman Joanne Randall said, “Until Mr. Nutter shows us absolute proof that the town is responsible, it’s not our responsibility to replace the wall.”

The state constitution prohibits towns from spending public funds for private property unless there is proof the town was negligent in some way, Randall said.

Nutter offered a “compromise” to the town, saying the town could repair the wall with stones from other parts of his property, at town expense and with Ellis supervisiing.

The selectmen agreed to send a letter to Nutter detailing their position on the matter, and to listen to the compromise “if it is agreeable to the board,” Cota said.

“We have a ‘standard of care’ as town officials,” Cota said. “Did we do our due diligence? I think we did.”

By Kathleen Bailey

Last year on July 24, Epsom Selectmen Chairman Bob Blodgett was investigating a blasting complaint when his wife, Anne, called, informing him that a tree was down on Goboro Road. Blodgett went to Goboro Road, discovered that the downed tree was on the Chichester side, and waited until Chichester town personnel came to cut up the tree. While waiting, his cell phone began to ring, with calls as far away as Atlanta, Ga. But Blodgett still didn’t know what his town was facing. When he got a call from Gov. John Lynch’s office to meet him at the junction of routes 4 and 107, he went -- and after fighting his way through a knot of emergency vehicles and roadblocks, he learned that Epsom had been hit with a tornado.

They were at work, at the store, or home with children on summer vacation. Each resident of Epsom, Deerfield and Northwood has a story about where they were when the 2008 tornado cut its way through their town. The twister changed the landscape -- and their lives -- forever.

The tornado tore through towns from Free-dom to Epsom. It produced winds of 111 to 135 mph and was categorized as an EF2 to EF 1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures damage from wind speed. An EF5, more than 200 mph, is the highest rating. And no one saw it coming: the National Weather Service did not issue a tornado warning until one person had already been killed.

Talk of the town
Blodgett, born and raised in Penacook, had never seen a twister before. The closest he’s ever come, he said, was the 1938 hurricane.

Routes 4 and 28 were the only main roads open, with the junction of 4 and 107 congested by emergency vehicles. Echo Valley and Griffin roads, shared with Deerfield, were completely blocked off. The town decided to open the Center Hill Road bridge, even though it still needed some backfill and paving, so people could have a way to and from Route 4. As a town father, Blodgett went right to work to help his people. He stayed at the emergency shelter at the school until evening, making sure there was enough of everything. He and Road Agent Gordon Ellis took water, paper products and canned goods to isolated families.

Other volunteers opened roads for traffic, checked on seniors, and searched through the debris. Chainsaws buzzed as town workers tried to clear the roads and homeowners tried to clean their yards.

“We worked steady for a week,” Blodgett said. But it showed him and Epsom what they could do.

“They did a great job,” he said of his fellow townspeople. “Everyone pitched in.”

While the town already had an emergency management director, Rick Bilodeau, who “dug in and took over,” the twister gave Epsom an impetus to fine tune its emergency management operation.

“We’ve been updating it all the time since then,” Blodgett said. “In the future, no matter what it is, we’ll be prepared.”

Fellow selectman Joanne Randall agreed. The town had already begun working on emergency management plans, due to three successive floods. But they weren’t “mentally prepared” for a tornado, she added, and the twister called for even more planning.

“It forced us to think on a bigger scale,” she said. “Now we know we have to prepare for anything.”

Randall was at work July 24. Running an errand at lunchtime, she heard a radio item about a tornado passing through Epsom. It was a “weird” thing to hear, she recalled, especially since it wasn’t raining in Concord. She called it a day and tried to get home to her town and family.

The week of July 24 had already been a rough one for Epsom, with a shorthanded police department, a barn fire that turned out to be arson, and a fatal motor vehicle accident.

Randall had trouble getting through the vehicles and emergency personnel at routes 4 and 107, but finally made it. When she reached “incident command,” she learned of the death of Brenda Stevens, who lived just over the town line in Deerfield.

“That’s when it hit me,” Randall said.

The town was in shock for a day and a half, she said.

“We all wondered, ‘What just happened to us?’” But there was work to do. Fire Chief Stewart Yeaton took the helm at Incident Command, with help from Police Chief Wayne Preve and Bilodeau. But there was more help, Randall said: about 30 other towns and agencies pitched in to help.

Most of the property damage was personal, not municipal, she said. No town buildings were damaged, and FEMA allotted $25,000 to Epsom to clean up roadways, ditches and downed trees.

Since the twister, Epsom has taken several steps to be more prepared, she said. In March, the townspeople passed a budget allowing for better police wages and the hiring of two or three new officers.

This is a direct result of the tornado, Randall believes.

“They knew we were short-staffed during the disaster,” she said.

Fire Chief Stewart Yeaton has begun an Explorer post, so the young men and women will be trained to help out in emergencies, she added. And with FEMA and town funds, they’ve improved culverts, ditches and bridges.

“Drainage -- that’s huge,” Randall said.”

Epsom did recover from the tornado, and a few weeks later held its annual Old Home Day. That’s when Joanne Randall finally knew the storm was over.

“It was,” she said, “our biggest turnout in years. People were so glad to be there. It was as if they dug in their heels and reinforced their commitment to Epsom. It was a celebration of our community.”

Home front
On that July 24, Aileen Jones of Old Ritchie Road, in Deerfield near the Epsom line, was relaxing at home with her three children. Her husband, Bill, was working at his diesel business on the property. Her oldest son, now 13, wanted to ride his bicycle, and Jones said no. “I just had the feeling,” she said, “that I didn’t want him outside.”

At 11:30 a.m. she heard a loud “boom,” and her older son went out on the back deck.

“We saw a green wall coming toward us,” she said. She locked the back door just as all the trees ringing the house fell down at the same time. She had seen the majestic pines bend before storms before and thought, “Surely they’re going to come back up.” But they didn’t.

She saw the largest pine tree in the yard ripped from its roots and come flying through the air. That was enough for Jones, who grabbed her infant daughter and told her older son to take the younger downstairs. With her baby on her hip and holding her dog by the collar, she and her family tumbled down the stairs to the basement and Bill’s workshop. She rushed her brood into the half-bath and laundry room Bill uses when he’s working, and put the two older children in a corner where two concrete walls meet.

“If I had to, I was going to lay my body over them,” she said. With the baby in her arms and the dog by its collar, she sat down on a pile of laundry.

As they put their lives and home back together, with help, Jones got a fresh sense of what matters. “It’s family and friends,” she said, adding, "I'm so grateful."

By Kathleen Bailey

The band members, all in concert black-and-white, tuned up as the setting sun flashed off their golden trumpets and trombones. As parents set up their lawn chairs or blankets, their children ran to the nearby playground, while younger siblings tumbled in the grass. Band members conferred about a difficult passage and senior citizens sprayed on mosquito repellent. With the Epsom Town Band all in place, conductor T.J. Rand waved his baton, and the “Star Spangled Banner” filled the air. As the 30 or 40 people on the grass got to their feet, one woman snapped a picture of the band with her cell phone.

The Epsom Town Band has weathered social and technological changes since forming in the late 19th century. But they still get together, 25 strong, to play four public concerts every summer. The faithful listeners who sit in, on or near their cars reflect the band’s central truth: “If you play it, they will come.”

On a recent Friday night, Bruce Graham unpacked his drumsticks. Graham and his wife, Penny, now manage the band, he said. They both play percussion. Penny Graham’s father, John B. Yeaton, managed the band before the Grahams, and her family involvement goes back to the early years. Two of her great-uncles are featured in an early photo, he said.

The band plays for three Friday nights in July, plus on the Saturday night of Old Home Day. All concerts are in Webster Park. It’s the greatest show in Epsom on a summer Friday, and possibly the only one. Admission is free. Cars start pulling onto the grass at around 7:15 for a 7:30 start. People unpack coolers or munch on take-out. Lawn chairs snap open.younger or more agile often sprawl on blankets, or the hoods of their cars. Anything goes.

The music is like comfort food for the ears: marches, light classical and show tunes. Some of the arrangements are simple, some more complex. In the July 10 concert, Rand brought the best out of the musicians with “Another Opening, Another Show” from “A Chorus Line,” “Hello, Dolly” from the same, and a rousing “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” “Some Enchanted Evening” brought a moving clarinet solo before the brass built to a finish. Between numbers, the band members were relaxed, joking with Rand and each other.

Though members range from 80-somethings to 10-year-old Paul Bennett, there’s no great divide of age. They chat back and forth, the older helping the younger with a difficult passage, the younger helping the older with the fine print. Bennett said he’s the youngest in the orchestra.

“My sister’s 11 and she plays,” he said. “So does my mom.” Bennett joined “just for the fun of it,” and though his peers are playing different tunes on their mp3 players, he doesn’t find the band music dorky.

“I like it,” he said with a smile.

As the sun set, a breeze came up and the windbreakers went on. An intermission brought the band members into the audience to visit with friends and relatives. In the silence, night birds and crickets could be heard. As the band assembled again, the stage was the only spot of light in the park. The music drowned out the shouts of children from the playground and the noise of cars from Route 28. Rand pulled out all the stops for the song “More,” with a driving brass line and a drum solo by Graham. The audience warmed up, adding catcalls to their clapping. Fans who stayed in their cars tooted their horns in approval, and the band members tooted theirs with even more vigor.

While many of the fans are from Epsom, the concerts draw people from all over the region. Paul Larivee of Northwood attended for the first time with his friend Sandra Martin of Epsom. It won’t be the last, Larivee said. “I just like the fact that they’re here -- and doing such great music!” he said.

“This is real music,” Flo Burgess of Manchester said. “We’re ‘groupies,’” she added jokingly. Burgess drives over from Manchester with a friend, Denise Brissett of Allenstown, to support Brissett’s father, one of the percussionists.

The band also draws players from around the region, who want the chance to play patriotic music and show tunes, or simply to play outdoors. Ralph Turmelle of Rochester said what he likes is “I get to play!” Turmelle also toots his horn with the Strafford Wind Symphony, groups in Rochester and Wolfeboro, the Exeter Brass Band and as a “sub” with the Seacoast Wind Ensmble.

Turmelle said he played trumpet originally, but got into the euphonium “when a bnad I was in ran out of euphonium players.” “That’s how a lot of us get started,” 16-year-old Eric Chase, also a euphonium player, said.

Concerts continue Fridays, July 17 and 24, at 7:30 p.m., in Webster Park. Admission is free. Bring bug spray. A concert will also take place Saturday, Aug. 8, during Epsom’s Old Home Day.

By Kathleen Bailey

Steve Landry, Merrimack County Watershed Supervisor, has a simple answer for when the Suncook River should have been stabilized: “About two years ago,” the staff member of the Department of Environmental Services said.

But there are no simple answers for the Suncook, which changed its course in the Mother’s Day flood of 2006. Landry, fellow DES staffer Steve Couture and the town of Epsom are applying for alternate funding after a grant application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was rejected recently.

Water under the bridge The Suncook changed its course, and the face of Epsom, on May 15, 2006. The storm event, now known as the Mother’s Day Flood, rerouted the river, which originates in Alton and Pittsfield. The river used to split at Bear Island in Epsom, with a larger tributary running around the northwest and a smaller one around the southeast, before they joined up again. With the rerouting, called an “avulsion,” all the water went to the southeast, leaving the northwest high and dry.

The change of course resulted in a process known as “head-cutting.” When the level of a river drops, the river “wants equilibrium,” according to Eric Orff, wildlife biologist and longtime Epsom resident. So the river “eats at” the bed of the river upstream, trying to reduce the grade, and sending sand, silt and sediment downstream.

The avulsion has created problems ranging from recreational to real estate, according to Epsom Selectman Chairman Keith Cota. Property values have dropped, resulting in both a loss of equity for homeowners and a lower tax base for Epsom. The town has lost its flood storage capacity, he said. A second avulsion, at Round Pond near Epsom Central School, has affected a wildlife habitat and is near the Epsom Municipal Well. The town beach, on Short Falls Road, has been closed for two years due to sediment from the avulsion.

Cota said he is “extremely disappointed” at the rejection of the grant. The grant wasn’t regular FEMA reimbursement, but from FEMA’S Disaster Mitigation Fund, a funding source for projects “so this kind of thing won’t happen again.”

But the process was simply too competitive, he said, with the “little Suncook River” up against projects from all over the country. The town has $50,000 set aside from a Community Development Block Grant, but will need another $3.5 million to do the job properly, he said. And the town doesn’t qualify for federal stimulus funds, he added, because the project is not “shovel ready.”

Job specs
“It is a big job,” Landry said.

The town of Epsom and the DES co-funded a study on the best ways to deal with the river, Landry said. They had public forums and formed a Suncook River Restoration Task Force. They came up with four or five different options, and decided option 3 to be the best.

Landry said option 3 involves installing grade controls, made of large stones, in the main channel of the Suncook. These are very large stones designed and sized specifically to stop erosion, he said. They are placed in structures called “rock veins” or “weirs,” and provide the river with resistance to further erosion.

“They arrest the head-cutting,” Landry said. Ideally, the grade control needs to be installed as soon as possible -- “as of two years ago,” Landry said.

The channel also needs access to a properly sized flood plain, which it doesn’t have now, Landry said.

Over geological time, Landry said, the river would eventually right itself. But that would take decades,and Epsom doesn’t have decades, he said.

“The infrastructure is at risk,” he said.

And residents, especially those living downstream, are frustrated, he said.

Cash flow crisis
While the river is flowing, the cash is not. The estimated cost for the “full-blown” project, is $4 million, Landry said. Since FEMA denied the grant, he expects to see the town scale back and just do the highest priority item, which is the grade control. But design and permits for that should run $400,000 to $500,000, he said, “just to get it ready for construction.”

Cota and the other selectmen, Bob Blodgett and Joanne Randall, are firm in their resolve not to ask taxpayers for the money. Epsom can’t afford it, Cota said, and the river is actually a state-owned entity.

Landry and Couture are seeking other funding options for the town. They have applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security for the design and permit phase, and Landry said, “I feel pretty good about this one.”

The grant is actually from the DES Dam Bureau, for the costs of maintaining dams in the Suncook River Watershed, but Landry thinks Epsom will qualify. And, he said, if the grant is given, it should go through fairly quickly.

Both Congressman Paul Hodes and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are also concerned, and have made river stabiilazation funds part of their requested appropriations for 2010 -- in the full amount, Landry said.

While he’s waiting for the federal and state funds to come through, Landry will continue to explore other ways of creative financing.

“It’s what we do,” he said.

And Cota hopes they do it well and soon.

“It’s very disappointing,” he said, ‘that we can go from 2006 to 2009 without a solution.”