Sound Shore Communities Appeal to County For Help with Flooding

by Harriet Kline

(January 13, 2005) The Westchester County Board of Legislators’ Committee on the Environment held a special meeting on January 13 at the Mamaroneck Town Center to focus on the issue of regional flooding. 2004 was a year of major water damage in neighborhoods throughout the Sound Shore, and this meeting, chaired by County Legislator Thomas J. Abinanti (D-Greenburgh) was designed to bring county attention to the problem. Also present were County Legislators Martin Rogowsky and James Maisano, New York State Assemblyman George Latimer, Village of Larchmont Mayor Ken Bialo, Village Trustee Anne McAndrews, Town Supervisor Valerie O’Keeffe, Town Councilman Ernest Odierna, Town Councilwoman Judy Myers, and representatives from the County’s departments of Planning, Public Works, Environmental Facilities and Emergency Services.

The meeting was held at the request of Mr. Latimer, who before his recent election to the NY Assembly had been a member of the County environmental committee for 10 years. He opened the meeting with the hope that three levels of government (municipalities, the county and the state) can work together to solve the regional flooding problems.

This was more of a fact-finding mission than a problem-solving event. Representatives of a number of communities had an opportunity to describe their concerns.

Village of Larchmont

Village of Larchmont Mayor Ken Bialo opened his remarks with a show of the stack of e-mails he had received from residents regarding the flooding in the Pine Brook area. He emphasized that although a certain amount of flooding has plagued the area for years (See: Pine Brook Floods Again), in his 11 year of experience as Village trustee and 3 as mayor, he has never seen the situation as bad as it was late last summer (particularly September 8, 2004) when a series of hurricane remnants pelted the region with much rain and caused significant residential damage.

In November, the Village board entered into an agreement with engineer Dolph Rotfeld for a study of the flooding. (See: Village Looking to Move Fast on Study for Pine Brook.) It is anticipated that any solution Mr. Rotfeld recommends will involve the rehabilitation of a culvert built in 1930 through the cooperative efforts of the Village of Larchmont, the City of New Rochelle and the Town of Mamaroneck. The culvert runs from New Rochelle under the thruway, the railroad tracks and the Pine Brook area. Both the study and the infrastructure work will be expensive, said the mayor, and “We will need help from you,” he told the committee.

Supervisor Valerie O’Keeffe endorsed the mayor’s comments and sketched out the development of the area since the 1930 construction of the pipe. The Town has also engaged engineer Dolph Rotfeld to look into the flooding in the area of Cabot Road and Laurel Avenue.

MapQuest shows Pine Brook Drive wending its way from Palmer Avenue to Lincoln Street

Larchmont Village Trustee Anne McAndrews also supported Mayor Bialo’s contention that the flooding situation has gotten worse. She indicated that the Village constitutes merely an area of 1 square mile, with only 6,400 residents with only 1,800 units paying property taxes. It is too small to deal with the flooding problem with its own resources.

Several Pine Brook area residents were on hand to support the mayor’s comments about the severity of the recent storms. Eric Berg of 26 Mayhew Avenue indicated that he had four feet of water in his back yard on September 8. He implored the county legislators to examine the flooding issue on the basis of four points:

• Fairness – Why should the Village of Larchmont serve as the catch basin for the rest of Westchester County?
  
  
• Infrastructure - water gushing out of storm drains is indicative of a systemic breakdown and needs professional attention
  
  
• The amount of water in his neighborhood transcends mere “nuisance” – it is frightening.
  
  
• The flooding is affecting his and his neighbors’ family life.

Rye

Holly Kennedy, representing 30 homeowners in the Indian Village area, painted a similar picture of the devastation of her neighborhood last September and indicated her frustration with the various Rye City, Rye Town and Rye Brook government agencies and/or departments that she said do not consider flooding as part of their mandate. Lisa Murphy cited the two-day closure of Rye High School in September as an indication of the seriousness of the recent flooding – flooding that cannot be solved by local municipalities.

Village of Mamaroneck

John Leitner of Rushmore Avenue and a member of the Village of Mamaroneck Environmental Committee told of raw sewage backups in his neighborhood. He stated that although sewers on his street had recently been relined, the flooding and backups have continued.

Next Steps

It was clear from the attention, questions and comments made by the three county legislators that their committee will be continuing to learn more about the local situation. “I find it interesting that no one has been able to pinpoint the specific problems,” said Mr. Abinanti after the meeting. “The first step is for the villages to continue their efforts to identify the origins and contributing causes of the problem.”

“We will be holding another meeting – in the next 30 to 60 days - to bring everyone together, and will continue the fact-finding mission with the ultimate goal of devising a solution everyone can participate in,“ he concluded.

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