The best part of serving the community is helping out constituents and connecting them with solutions.

When a Route 9G resident spoke to me over the summer about how her culvert clogged during the winter, flooding and freezing her driveway, I urged her to contact me when it happened, take photos and we could petition the state for a fix.

This morning I got a text and went to investigate.

Sure enough, the culvert was clogged and water 4 inches deep was flowing across her driveway. If this continued there would be a thick sheet of ice if the temperature dropped. And the driveway was already significantly eroded.

The output end of the culvert had little flow so the other end seemed the more likely culprit.

The opening is buried but I can hear a little water trickling. That suggests the opening may be obstructed. Before we ask the state to remedy the situation, we need to figure out what’s wrong.

So about 15 minutes of shoveling, chopping and poking later, I had cleared up the problem.

Turns out this time it was mostly ice and snow. Last year it was a car bumper from an accident on 9g jammed deep inside that the homeowner’s son was able to extract.

Before we ask the state to replace the culvert with something bigger, we’re going to try to prevent plows from burying the culvert’s entrance and see if that solves it next time around.