Those are the two concerns most residents on Harland Road mention when they talk about the consolidation of Three Rivers Community College at the Mohegan campus along Mahan Drive.

Ray Chapman, 74, pointed to a grate in a stream a few hundred feet from his house. When it rains more than an inch, there is more water than the pipes can handle and his yard and his neighbors' yards are flooded. He replants his grass and rakes it over every time that happens.

"There isn't much else that you can do," he said. "That's our biggest problem. The traffic is a problem, too. I don't see how they can fix the traffic."

Brian Lamothe, 43, a nearby homeowner, stood in his front yard as traffic zipped by him at a rate of about one car every few seconds. He said he has mixed feelings about the Mahan Drive project.

"I went to Three Rivers, so I like that it is in my community, but I don't want it to affect this area drastically. As you can see, the traffic is already bad," Lamothe said. The expansion of his alma mater may affect his home. After graduating from Three Rivers in 1997, he went on to UConn, where he will graduate this year.

"To me, that's not smart growth to put it in a residential neighborhood," said Bob Spayne, 66, a former member of the Norwich City Council and Harland Road homeowner.

"All one has to do is look at what's happened at NFA -- they have outgrown the campus there. Expansion isn't going to solve this."

"Not one of us doesn't want to see something good happen for Mohegan College. A lot of us here are educators. We really feel that they are being short-changed because that is a lousy piece of property and it is too residential," said Mary English, a homeowner on Harland Road.

She has lived in her white house with green shutters her entire life. Her parents built the house in 1928. Before Three Rivers was built, she did not need water pumps in her cellar. Now she has two because of the runoff from the school.

She listed the three main problems with the expansion as the traffic, which she said sometimes impedes emergency vehicles from getting to The William W. Backus Hospital, the flooding, which she can see out her window, and the building of too many projects in too small an area.

"There is nothing for those kids to do. If they want a sandwich, they've got to go somewhere. If they want a book, they've got to go somewhere. And it's going to destroy the residential area here, and it's one of the few left in Norwich."