After two decades of flooding, Norbert Pestana was awash with relief when he learned town officials want to buy and demolish his Haigh Avenue home.

Since 1983, Pestana has watched as the home where he and his wife Helen raised their family suffered seven 100-year floods. After Mother’s Day flooding in 2006 left his basement full of water yet again, Pestana banded together with neighbors and petitioned the town to buy them out.

With help from a $1.889 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant and $700,000 match from the state, selectmen are bringing an end to a 30-year-old problem.

Nine homes at the end of Haigh Avenue, including Pestana’s, will be purchased and demolished at no cost to the taxpayer. The state will then use the 5.4 acres as drainage for Interstate 93.

It’s a bittersweet end to a lengthy battle for Pestana, vice chairman of Salem’s Flood Mitigation Action Committee, who watched the value of his home sink with every inch of rising water.

“It’s somewhat of a relief, but it’s one of those things,” he said. “The problems that were here needed to be dealt with, but we’re saddened that we have to leave.”

Neighbor Louise Loguidice shared Pestana’s mixed emotions. Loguidice didn’t have any intention of leaving her home until after her children graduated from high school. But even then, how could she sell a house that was at times under water?

“Who would buy a home that floods every couple of years?” she asked. “Your home is worth what someone will pay for it.”

With one child still in high school, Loguidice wants to stay in Salem. Still, she supports what the town has done. Spending her golden years sandbagging her home was not Loguidice’s dream for retirement.

“Hopefully, I’ll find something on dry land I can afford,” she said.

Demolishing the homes is expected to start in the spring and officials plan to turn the land over to the state within 18 months of November.

With nine homes down, that leaves 14 more to go, said Selectman Everett McBride. He has been involved in the project since the 1987 floods. An application for another FEMA grant will be readied as the town moves ahead with the project’s first phase, he said.