It keeps flooding. And the impact is becoming more dire.
Heavy rains pounded parts of Connecticut Friday as state officials announced preliminary damage estimates of at least $20 million in lost sales for farmers hit by an unusual flood earlier this month.
Meanwhile, a 39-year-old woman and her 5-year-old daughter were swept away in a swollen Connecticut river earlier this week and died.
State Police say two people were pulled from the Shetucket River in Sprague on Tuesday. Kelly Dora, 39, of Norwich and her daughter Aralye McKeever, 5, were identified as the victims by police on Thursday. CT Insider reports their deaths were ruled by state medical examiners as accidental drownings.
Severe weather continues to plague Connecticut this summer. In Bristol last Sunday, the Pequabuck River flooded resulting in residents having to be rescued from stranded cars.
"Frederick Street, we pulled somebody out, the water was still coming up, it was up to the door handle on the car," Deputy Fire Chief David Simard told Connecticut Public. "So, we just had to pull them right out of the window."
Danbury and Waterbury were other cities that dealt with localized flooding.
The entire state was under a tornado watch Sunday.
In Litchfield County, Sen. Richard Blumenthal visited with a shop owner in Colebrook on Monday who’s basement flooded with more than a half-foot of rain.
“One of the reasons I’m going around the state, quite honestly, is to make sure that local officials, local businesses, local farms, submit the information so that we can declare a disaster," Blumenthal said.
Recreation on the state's shoreline has also been affected by recent downpours.
Several local beaches have been closed this week, including the beach at Rocky Neck State Park in Niantic and the swimming area at Milford's Silver Sands State Park. High levels of bacteria in the water led to closures at those beaches Thursday.
Wesleyan ends “legacy” admissions
Wesleyan University in Middletown says it will no longer admit students based on an applicant’s legacy status.
“We’re not going to give more advantages to the still predominantly white alumni body,” Roth said in an interview with Connecticut Public.
The Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended a practice put in place to help people of color better access a college education when it released a decision on June 29, striking down affirmative action admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
In the wake of that decision, critics have targeted so-called “legacy admissions” as a way to counter the court’s controversial decision that's expected to limit the diversification of American higher education.
Roth says the recent SCOTUS decision compelled the university to take this public stance against legacy admissions.
Lamont says “outside firm” will examine traffic ticket audit
Gov. Ned Lamont says an independent unit will investigate the Connecticut state police. The comments come following an analysis of eight years of traffic stop data submitted to the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project. That analysis found at least 25,966 of the traffic tickets submitted to the project were possibly falsified.
But the number of false records could be as high as 58,553 “overreported” racial profiling records, according to the project.
“If people were not investigating this thoroughly, if they knew there were purposeful mistakes … those people should go and I think their management should take a look at themselves as well,” Lamont told WFSB Tuesday.
The Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project performed the audit of its traffic stop data after an August 2022 report from CT Insider found four state troopers falsifying traffic tickets to show that they’d been more productive than they actually were.
Analysts are concerned data presented in previous reviews could now be compromised, an alarming possibility since that data already uncovered racial disparities in traffic stops in Connecticut.
The Office of the Chief State's Attorney is also investigating the potential falsification of traffic tickets by state troopers in Connecticut.
Frankie & Johnny premieres Fridays at 4:44 p.m. during All Things Considered on Connecticut Public Radio. Connecticut Public Radio’s Jeni Ahrens, Abigail Brone, Matt Dwyer, Kay Perkins, Patrick Skahill and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
