NORWAY – Downtown residents and business people on the south side of Main Street are cautiously waiting for the rising water of Pennesseewassee Stream to crest and subside after Monday’s torrential rains caused flooded basements and at least one evacuation of a home in the Greenleaf/Horn street area.

Longtime resident Dick Parsons said he remembers when the area flooded about 40 or 50 years ago, “but I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said of the stream that runs from Lake Pennesseewassee through downtown and into the Little Androscoggin River.

Norway Emergency Management Director Bonnie Seames said the dam at Lake Pennesseewassee was lowered to prevent flooding to lakeside houses, but by doing so it swells the water in the stream that comes off the lake.

“There was so much water coming off the lake,” said Seames Monday night of the unusual storm situation.

Town Manager David Holt said the dam is routinely lowered to prevent flooding. “This isn’t new to us. But 5 inches of rain is a lot,” he said.

“There’s no where for it to go,” said Holt of the rain. Holt said officials started to drain the dam several days ago in anticipation of the torrential rain.

A dam further downstream behind Aubuchon’s Hardware was also lowered as far it it could be.

“That helps,” he said of efforts to regulate the two dams to try to keep the floodwaters under control.

Holt said he anticipates in a day or two things will be much better in the Greenleaf/Horn street area, but things will still be “iffy” at the lake where rain and snow runoff continue to add water to the lake level.

Meanwhile sump pumps have been flying off the shelves of local hardware stores.

Parsons, who works at L.M. Longely & Son on Main Street, said sump pumps were being sold as fast as they could get them in.

By 2 p.m. Monday, they had sold out of their stock of 12. Six more sump pumps were on order Tuesday, but some of those had already been sold before they hit the shelves, he said. Aubuchon’s Hardware, located further down Main Street in Norway, sold out of its 50 sump pumps Monday.