Sandy recovery continues

Still much work to be done four years later

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Four years have passed since Superstorm Sandy swept across Oceanside and Island Park, and it has been three and a half years since the New York Rising program was created to help homeowners and businesses recover from the storm.

Many people have yet to rebuild and return to their homes.

The Town of Hempstead Building Department has waived the permit fee for homeowners who are rebuilding their homes. Additionally, the town has rebuilt bulkheads at Shell Creek Park and at Bay Park’s Grand Canal, while making Hewlett Point Park more storm resilient. And a $325 million U.S. Army Corps coastal hardening and resiliency project has commenced, with town support.

Hempstead is also studying its storm-water drainage system to see how it could be improved to protect against future storms.

The Village of Island Park has used Federal Emergency Management Agency money to study its storm-water drainage systems and clean out drainage boxes and pipes. The village has also contracted with Weeping Willow Tree Service to evaluate all trees on village properties. Diseased trees must come down. The village will start removing the tree roots later this month, and planting of new trees will begin in the spring.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed 22 local committees to plan “resiliency” projects that are intended to hold back big storms if, and when, they strike in the future.

All but one of the communities covered under the plan—Bayville—are found on the South Shore—13 in Nassau County and nine in Suffolk.

The communities are eligible for up to $250 million in funding from GOSR.

Cuomo appointed Community Reconstruction Program leaders and directed them to organize local planning committees, which drew members from fire departments, local governments, chambers of commerce, religious institutions and civic organizations. They held a combined 525 meetings in a little under eight months. Participants spoke on what they believed their communities needed to better prepare for tropical storms and hurricanes.

The state then hired four consulting firms, including multinational companies Arup, Jacobs, Perkins Eastman and URS Corporation, now part of Aecom, to do most of the design work.

Plans were submitted to the state for approval in March 2014. Projects are, for the most part, yet to get under way.

According to the GOSR report forty-seven design projects have been approved as part of the Community Reconstruction Program of NY Rising in Nassau County, but only three are being implemented, and none have the design complete.

Todd Kaminsky, a Democratic state senator from Long Beach, said, “There’s a lot of that we need to see to fruition.” A number of projects, he said, are held up at the local level, where plans must be vetted by the towns and villages before they can move forward.

There is, however, an urgent need for resiliency projects, he noted. “Are we going to wait for the next storm to happen” before construction gets under way? he said. “There is going to be another storm that is going to hit.”

Meanwhile, Assembly David McDonough, a Republican from North Merrick, said, “The governor’s plans look good on paper, but the money hasn’t come through yet. I don’t think the money is coming down fast enough.”

Projects vary. Here are some:

The Atlantic Beach committee plans “to harden” the infrastructure around three water-pump stations to keep saltwater out if the Atlantic were to flood this Long Beach barrier island community once again.

The Bellmore-Merrick committee plans to upgrade drainage outflow pipes that let out into the bays, installing “check valves” that would close shut in the event of flooding. The valves, officials said, would help prevent saltwater inundation.

The Freeport committee would add underground electrical lines.

The Oceanside committee would restore damaged wetlands to serve as a protective barrier if the Atlantic were ever to rise up again as it did during Sandy.

And the list goes on. See all plans at stormrecovery.ny.gov/community-regions/long-island