Sunrise Highway lighting project to start

New lighting will be installed on Sunrise Highway in Valley Stream this year, marking the beginning of the end of a project that has been in the works since February 2007.

“I am ecstatic,” said Mayor Ed Fare. “We’ve been talking about it since I became a trustee in 2001.”

The village sent a letter to proceed to Welsbach Electric Corp., of Plainview, on Feb. 9. The contract allows 270 days for the work to be completed.

Workers will install approximately 90 poles on the state-owned highway, half of which will have dual lamps lighting both sides of the road. They will be brighter and more energy-efficient, and will be erected in the roadway’s center median, replacing the current poles along the shoulders between Rockaway Avenue and the village’s border with Rosedale. Fare said that the highway “goes dark” as it passes through Valley Stream, and the new lights will make the stretch safer and more attractive.

The state approved a $1.08 million grant to cover the work in 2007, and in the years that followed there were exchanges of paperwork concerning specifications and adjustments. The process was wrought with setbacks, Fare said — minor adjustments required redoing the application multiple times, and evolving regulations necessitated further changes. “This program has been molasses going backwards uphill in winter,” he said.

Buildings Superintendent Tom McAleer said that the work could be delayed by weather, but when it is under way, disruption to traffic is expected to be minimal. He explained that the lights would be incandescent bulbs, which create a wider glow than the more precise LED bulbs the village is installing on its roads.

Fare said he was eager to see the project through. “I want to see it done,” he said.