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Mostly Cloudy Island Park tries to reduce flooding problem
Village engineers conducting survey of storm drains
At a Village Board meeting on Sept. 15, a representative of the village’s engineering firm spoke to residents about what was being done to clear the drainage pipes in the village and, officials hope, mitigate some of the area’s flooding problems.
The engineering firm, Walden Associates, has been studying the village’s drainage system to see which catch basins, or street drains, are working effectively and which need to have inserts in-stalled that will collect trash in the water before it makes it to the pipes. The village will also be installing swirl separators in its outflow pipes, which filter out finer pieces of litter.
A $410,000 grant the village received from Nassau County will fund the project. The village also contributed $66,500, bringing the total funds for the project to $476,500.
“Most of [the money] is going to go into keeping the water quality cleaner with the swirl separators and the catch basin inserts, which are going to remove all the leaves and junk and stop the pipes from clogging in the future,” said Peter Brighton, a project manager for Walden Associates, who spoke to concerned residents at the meeting. “In addition to that, the village just recently purchased a sweeper.”
The sweeper truck, also bought with the grant money, also has vacuum capabilities. The village will use it not only to sweep the streets, but also to clean out the catch basins.
“The grant allowed us to purchase this vacuum/sweeper truck,” said Island Park Mayor James Ruzicka. “It’s highly sophisticated and it will help us clean our drain boxes on a more regular basis. We hope to get that out there at least twice a year. We will have a schedule and keep a log of all the drain boxes and what we find and the condition of them.”
While the catch basins were the focus of Walden’s study, the flooding in the village became the focus of the meeting. Residents, many of whom live on Nassau Lane, one of the worst-flooded areas in the village during Tropical Storm Irene, wanted to know why their area floods so much.
