The waves Sunday may have been welcomed by surfers, but in what is becoming an all-too familiar occurrence with certain high tides, low-lying areas around Gloucester flooded Sunday.
The city also alerted residents to two combined sewer overflows affecting the waters of Gloucester Harbor.
Harriet Webster Pier at Maritime Gloucester on Harbor Loop was inundated shortly before high tide around noon Sunday, according to a post by the nonprofit on Facebook.
The area around the Good Harbor Beach footbridge off Nautilus Road was turned into a roiling sea. Causeway Street flooded at about the same time, according to a Facebook post by Chris Sicuranza, a former aide in the mayor’s office and chief of staff at Northern Essex Community College.
He urged motorists to avoid travel on Causeway Street around 11 a.m. Sunday.
The Essex Causeway, carrying Main Street, which is Route 133, over the Essex River also flooded Sunday.
“Here we go again! Our 5th flooding event in 15 months,” wrote Michael De Koster, the executive director of Maritime Gloucester, on Facebook on Sunday. “Sea level rise and extreme weather patterns are contributing to higher tide and coastal surges. Today was not as bad as January’s event.”
He wrote that “new strategies and surge protection plans continue,” thanking his team and apprenticeship cadets for helping with the cleanup.
On Monday, De Koster said if the wind shifts in a southerly direction, there is potential for more flooding events later this week. The wind and the current are things to watch. Monitoring the tide, he said it was looking to be about 6 inches less than Sunday.
“We are getting good at this,” De Koster said of the ability to remediate the flooding, having to deal with the inconvenience of shutting down for the cleanup.
Each of the floods can impact their platforms, making it imperative to address their seawalls “a lot quicker,” he said.
The city Sunday afternoon sent out a notice about two combined sewer overflows. The first took place at 4:55 a.m. at 18 Rogers St. with an estimated discharge of 51,000 gallons, an event that ended at 11:45 that morning.
The second overflow on Sunday was much shorter and reported at 8 East Main St. starting at 11:10 a.m. and ending at 1:05 p.m. The estimated volume was 18,000 gallons.
Such sewage overflows likely consisted of treated or partially treated sewage and waste. People were urged to avoid contact with the water in the harbor for 48 hours after the discharge ceased “due to increased health risks from bacteria and other pollutants,” the notification read.