After spending last spring underwater, residents of one New Brunswick village are hoping for the spring thaw to come slowly and for the new provincial government to act fast.

The village of Hillsborough, N.B., in the southeast corner of the province, is bordered by the Petitcodiac River and traversed by a number of creeks.

Flooding is a worry on the minds of local residents, because of both the snow on the ground and the memories of last spring.

Last April, waters rose to flood the village and farmers’ fields, where it was as high as fence posts in some cases.

Business owner Emily Broad got to her shop on the back of an ATV because of the flooding.

Though the nearly 400 centimetres of snow that fell there this season boosted her sales; she sold almost 200 snowblowers, now she’s worries what will happen to her store when it all melts.

“What we're scared of is quick warm weather and rainfall coming at once, and that's when we're in trouble,” Broad said.

Last year’s lesson learned, Broad said she already has her shop rigged up to fend off the potential flooding.

“We have the sump pumps that we hook up. We do have a permanent spot where we put them in now,” she said.

But the village of Hillsborough has a problem too big for sump pumps alone to handle.

In the words of Hillsborough Mayor Patrick Armstrong, the problem “is we're surrounded by dykes all along the Petitcodiac River and we have aqueducts that open and close with the tides.”

During high tide, those dykes are closed, allowing the water to back up significantly, says Bruce Alcorn, a member of Hillsborough Flood Waters, a group taking aim at the village’s recurring flooding issue.

Alcorn says he wants the province’s new Liberal government to take steps the previous government didn’t.

“The canal … dredging it down a couple feet, widening it a bit would help tremendously,” said Alcorn.“It would allow a lot of water to displace and prevent it from getting into the buildings.”

If the province does act, it won’t be in time for this spring, leaving residents waiting and hoping for a slow thaw.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis