Gerritsen Beach Will Wait Two More Years For Long Overdue Project To Reduce Flooding

Long before Hurricane Sandy swept through their neighborhood, carrying away cars, trees, and even homes, residents in Gerritsen Beach urged city agencies to make road and sewer repairs that would reduce serious flooding. Now, due in large part to federal money for Sandy recovery efforts, the work will finally get done — though it will be another two years before a single shovel hits the pavement.

It doesn’t take a Sandy-sized storm to cause property damage and severe flooding in the neighborhood’s Old Section. Poor drainage causes water to collect in the streets, sometimes spilling into people’s basements or corroding street foundations so much that great sinkholes break open in the middle of the road.

“The street I live on is absolutely horrible. It’s like a roller coaster,” resident Joyce Burrafato said of the sinkholes and potholes near her home on Bartlett Place. “The streets get flooded just with heavy rains. One of my neighbors has a lake on his street. And during the winter, if it rains and then gets cold, they have an ice skating rink.”

Thanks to money from FEMA and funds from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), a number of streets will finally receive major road and sewer reconstruction to improve drainage during major storms. However, this project is still in the initial planning phase. Construction won’t begin until 2017, and some residents and community leaders are disappointed the work won’t begin sooner.

“This work should have started yesterday,” Community Board 15 chairwoman Theresa Scavo said after attending a meeting with city officials. “When it rains, water has to travel up a hill to go into a sewer. So all of these homes are underwater every time there’s a heavy downpour.”

The DOT and DEP referred requests for information to the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), which is coordinating the project in Gerritsen. A spokesperson for the DDC said the agency is still in the design phase, which won’t be completed until 2016. Work is expected to begin in the spring of 2017.

George Broadhead, president of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association, said that for six or seven years he’s been inviting elected officials down to the neighborhood to get them to fix drainage problems.

“I called officials down to Frank Court, that’s one example, because the neighbors were having problems actually leaving their house. Some elderly people had to walk through deep water,” he said. “We had people from the DEP and DOT come look at it. They did some repairs on the drainage, but in fact, it started all over again. The work never really cured it, it just diminished it.

“The fact is, it took Sandy for people to get going and come up with the money. Like anything, stuff like this costs a lot,” Broadhead added.

Doreen Garson, a longtime resident and chief of the Vollies, the Gerritsen Beach volunteer fire department, said she suspects Sandy exacerbated many of the problems in her neighborhood.

“I think the sinkholes are really a problem with Sandy. The water came in forcefully and then when the water came back out again, I think it took a lot of sand with it,” she said. “So I think the sand underneath the pipes and underneath the streets is gone. There’s nothing supporting them. So everything is sinking and there are big holes popping up.”

However, Garson said she was pleased some of the drainage problems in Gerritsen will finally be fixed.

“This is a big city project. Everything takes a long time, only because the planning has to be right. We don’t want this to get done the wrong way,” she said. “So the money is there finally and now it will get done.”