CONWAY — What started as a lawyer’s notice to the town regarding flooding of a resident’s basement has turned into a neighborhood effort to determine the source of the water.

When torrential rains dumped inches of water on Conway on July 21, Upper Baptist Hill Road resident Donna Gilman found several feet of water in her basement, which had to be pumped out twice by the Conway Fire Department. Gilman contacted her friend and lawyer Lisa Brodeur-McGan following the storm to investigate the water runoff, which they alleged to be town water diverted from neighbors onto the public road and into Gilman’s basement in a letter to the Selectboard.

Those residents, Patricia Vinchesi and Dan Fitzgibbons, who have lived on Upper Baptist Hill Road for more than 30 years, say the claims are false and all alterations made to their property have been properly documented. Additionally, they say a spring on the ridge above the neighborhood’s parcels runs off into a ditch, where they had a pipe installed in 2005 as part of their fully permitted leach field.

“Most systems could not keep up with the volume and velocity of the July 21 rainfall,” Vinchesi and Fitzgibbons wrote in a letter to the Selectboard because they were unable to attend the board’s meeting this week. “We were dismayed to receive this letter when a simple conversation with Ms. Gilman could have saved everyone some time. … Regrettably, even a cursory review of the water flow in the ditch would have quickly demonstrated that the water flow was coming far back from the forest line by the ridge.”

On Monday, the Selectboard discussed the letters with Brodeur-McGan, as well as several other Upper Baptist Hill Road and Pine Hill Road residents.

Supporting Vinchesi and Fitzgibbon’s claim was neighborhood resident Laurie Block, who said she has had water issues in the past on her land, but rarely in her home, until this extraordinary storm. Block added that storm runoff has long been a problem in the area and water flows have changed over the decades, along with the water table.

To solve this long-term challenge, Block said Upper Baptist Hill Road residents need to work together with the town to determine the source of the water and then figure out who is responsible for maintaining the pipes and drainage.

“It’s not a deliberate, vicious, intentional problem; it’s a longstanding one in a different ecological environment,” Block said of any allegation that her neighbors were diverting water. “I think a collective solution is absolutely required. … Beginning to map [the water infrastructure] out is an urgent issue.”

Selectboard Chair Philip Kantor called the ridge behind the neighborhood the “Pine Hill Slope” and said the amount of water running down Upper Baptist Hill Road was far beyond what other areas in town saw in July.

“I’ll never forget — it looked like ocean waves, it was cresting,” Kantor said. “The whole ridge has a problem. It sheds water that would make Noah from the Old Testament uncomfortable.”

Town Administrator Veronique Blanchard said one of their first steps should be to put together a layout of pipes and drainage. Then, if the town is responsible, it will need to find an engineer to help resolve the problem.

“I think there needs to be a lot of research done onto all the different pipes coming off the road. … In speaking with town counsel, that was her thought as well,” Blanchard said. “It feels like a lot of things got cobbled together over the years. I think we need some engineering answers.”

Selectboard member Erica Goleman agreed, adding that unprecedented natural disasters sometimes can’t be mitigated until they’ve already happened.

“All this stuff has been cobbled together, and up until July, I think we did a decent job of keeping everything together,” Goleman said. “This is a situation we couldn’t have anticipated.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.