Shore Road residents often say they feel their homes shake from passing cars and trucks, and that walking along their neighborhood is dangerous because there aren’t as many sidewalks as they’d like. This past year flooding has worsened, leaving many residents to trudge through ankle-deep water. Shore Road residents will see what they will consider a major safety concern upgraded in 2024.
Members of the Nassau County Legislature Rules Committee voted unanimously on Nov. 13 to sign off on funding for traffic engineering services for the expanded Shore Road streetscape, flood mitigation and traffic-calming project in Glen Cove and Sea Cliff. During the Rules Committee public hearing, Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton confirmed that a drainage study will be completed during the next several months as part of a broader scope streetscape project.
“We don’t know what’s happening with the pipes, and something’s happening because it’s not draining correctly,” DeRiggi-Whitton said. “We have to find out what the problem is before we can address it.”
The county has allocated $2.2 million toward the project in its initial stages. DeRiggi-Whitton urged County officials to proceed with the project as expeditiously as possible. She began the process of securing necessary funding for the initial stages of the streetscape project when members of the Public Works, Finance, and Rules committees of the Legislature voted unanimously to approve $700,000 in additional bonding for the initial stages of the project in August. The county’s Department of Public Works will inspect the outflow pipes and order repairs where they are not functioning properly. The findings will be incorporated into a comprehensive drainage study, which will be used to launch the design phase for the approximately $9 million county streetscape project.
“It’s a major problem. The road is now flooding quite regularly, and it’s been noted that one of the outflow pipes may have been covered when someone did a sea wall,” said DeRiggi-Whitton, who serves on the Rules Committee. “We always knew that drainage would be a part of this project. While it always used to flood, now it’s flooding on a whole different level.”