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Four roads flooded during Sandy would be rebuilt
Four streets in Baldwin may be raised in 2017, according to a committee that met with officials from New York Rising earlier this month.
According to members of the Baldwin planning committee, a panel of local civic and business leaders organized by New York Rising, preliminary work on the project remains before construction can begin. New York Rising is a program set up by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to administer efforts to rehabilitate and restore the region in the wake of the one-two punch of Tropical Storm Irene and Hurricane Sandy.
The street-raising is among the projects recommended by the committee for rehabilitation. A study is under way on another proposal, the Downtown Resiliency project.
Four streets that were under water during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — Washington, Jackson, Hayes and Van Buren places — would be raised. Before work begins, however, explained Baldwin resident David Viana, who was among those who met with New York Rising.
“[Engineers] have to do a survey, do a preliminary design, a final design and public outreach, and all their administrative preparations,” such as obtaining permits. “There are a lot of different steps before anything can happen,” Viana said. “They have to work with homeowners on the block before anything can be done.”
He described the session with New York Rising as “a briefing for the committee to meet with the consultant, D&B Engineers [and Architects of Woodbury], as far as what their scope of work for the project is and what the timeline is. They wouldn’t expect construction until sometime in 2017. All the other steps before that are going to take at least a year to do.”
The project is expected to cost $2 million, which would come from $10 million allotted to Baldwin after the storm by the federal government. The estimate includes $1.5 million for the road raising and $500,000 for bulkhead raising.
The Town of Hempstead will oversee the project, Viana said, explaining that the town is a sub-recipient of the federal money, after New York state. “The reason we hadn’t met until last week was because the Town of Hempstead didn’t finalize who the consultants were,” he said.
