Thursday, October 1, 2026
Flooding streets, polluted bays and aging infrastructure are reshaping life along Nassau and Suffolk counties’ coasts.
From the barrier island neighborhoods of Long Beach and Island Park to the waterways of the Great South Bay and Hempstead Harbor, communities are confronting the growing impacts of rising water, runoff and environmental strain.
Across Long Island, scientists and planners say, climate change, development patterns and aging infrastructure are converging to create new risks for coastal communities.
Nassau’s South Shore
Heavy rain can quickly overwhelm parts of Nassau County’s South Shore. In the West End of Long Beach, storm drains can fill within minutes as water pools at intersections, climbs curbs and creeps toward front steps.
In nearby Freeport, residents sometimes wade through ankle-deep water along canal-side streets.
In a Facebook poll from the Herald, residents of Oceanside and Island Park were invited to share experiences with bayside flooding.
Heavy rain combined with high tide, residents say, can push water back up through storm drains. Major flooding events, they report, have struck several times in recent years. High tides — particularly during a new moon and combined with strong winds — can bring roughly a foot of water onto some blocks.
Across the South Shore, flooding is no longer unusual. In many communities, it has become a regular part of life.
Long Beach and Island Park sit on narrow barrier islands only a few feet above sea level, while Freeport and Oceanside stretch along canals and bays that funnel water inland. All four communities connect through Reynolds Channel and the Western Bays, allowing tidal surges to move freely between them.
Much of the infrastructure in and beneath these communities — storm drains, sewer lines and bulkheads — was built decades ago, before sea levels began rising and extreme rainfall became more common.
“When you look at repeated flooding in coastal places like Long Beach and Freeport,” Amy Chester, managing director of the climate resilience nonprofit Rebuild by Design, said, “a huge part of the vulnerability comes down to how these neighborhoods were originally built, where houses went, how high they were built and what infrastructure was put underneath them.”
Many South Shore communities expanded rapidly during the post–World War II housing boom. Natural landscapes that once absorbed rainfall were replaced with pavement and development, while stormwater systems were designed with the assumption that rain would fall and simply drain away. Today, that assumption often proves faulty.
Living with water
Flooding now shapes daily life in many South Shore neighborhoods. Many residents move their cars to higher ground when storms threaten. Others install pumps in crawlspaces to push water back outside, though many say it still seeps back in. For many households, flooding now affects everyday decisions — from where to park to whether work or school schedules may change.
And flooding doesn’t stop at municipal borders. Rain falling in higher-elevation communities such as Lynbrook eventually flows downhill toward the bay. During intense storms, runoff travels from Nassau’s glacial high points on the North Shore toward its lowest-lying southern communities.
“If you look at the topography, it’s the result of a terminal moraine left by a glacier,” said Georgeen Theodore, an architect and urban planner with Interboro Partners.
“Water flows from the high point to the low point. What happens to a town on the bay is connected to towns uphill.”
Because of that connection, Theodore said, climate resilience must be addressed regionally. “Climate vulnerability cannot be solved by one village alone,” she said.
In Long Beach, the highest elevations are along the oceanfront, descending toward Reynolds Channel, where flooding is more common. Similar patterns appear along Freeport’s canals and along Island Park’s lowest blocks, where water tends to pond first and recede last.
Many resilience programs focus on homeowners, offering grants to elevate houses or retrofit properties. Renters, and residents of multifamily buildings, often have fewer options.
“If you don’t own your home, what are your choices?” Chester asked. “You can’t elevate the building. You can’t redesign the drainage.”
Historic housing policies also play a role. In the 1930s and 1940s, federal mortgage maps labeled certain neighborhoods risky for investment, often based on race or religion. “What we see today is the legacy of those decisions,” Chester said. “Areas that were denied investment then are often the same places facing higher climate risk now.”
Theodore cautions against viewing flooding as purely natural. “Is it a natural disaster,” she asked, “or the outcome of decades of planning and housing decisions?”
Fragmented solutions
Residents say that official responses to flooding have been inconsistent. Some recall sewer improvements in Island Park, but broader efforts have been limited. Experts say that effective solutions necessitate a regional approach.
The best way to manage rainfall, Theodore said, is to slow it before it reaches storm drains through strategies such as permeable pavement, rain gardens, increased tree cover and reducing paved surfaces.
“We want to slow the way water flows,” she said. “But we built for speed.”
With Nassau County already densely developed, creating space for water absorption has become increasingly difficult. Addressing flooding one property at a time won’t solve the larger problem, Theodore said, and long-term coordination will likely be necessary.
Some residents worry about what the next decade may bring as sea levels rise and flooding becomes more common. Communities including Long Beach, Freeport, Island Park and Oceanside increasingly represent the front line of a worsening problem.
The Great South Bay
Pollution entering the Great South Bay is closely tied to what happens on land, particularly through groundwater and runoff. The bay stretches along the South Shore, between the Island’s “mainland” and Fire Island. While it receives freshwater from rivers and streams, a significant portion flows underground through Long Island’s aquifer system.
As groundwater moves through soil, it carries pollutants on its way to the bay. “Excess fertilizer can then make its way into the water column, and that is going to stimulate these algal blooms,” Ryan B. Wallace, assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Adelphi University, said. “We have to be able to reduce the amount of nitrogen that’s entering into our groundwater.”
Nitrogen pollution is one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the bay. Much of it originates from cesspools and septic systems, while fertilizers used on lawns, golf courses and farmland also contribute.
Excess nitrogen fuels algae growth. As algae die and decompose, bacteria consume oxygen in the water.
The bay has also experienced harmful algal blooms such as brown tide, which block sunlight from reaching the bay floor and damage seagrass habitat. Because groundwater moves slowly, pollution entering the aquifer today may take years — or even decades — to reach coastal waters.
Despite these challenges, local organizations are working to improve water quality.
Save the Great South Bay, a nonprofit founded in 2012, focuses on reducing pollution and restoring the bay’s ecosystem.
“In each of the 16 towns that cross that area, we have appointed a creek defender who is a local steward,” Executive Director Robyn Silvestri said. “They go out, they patrol the creeks, look for trash or anything else that might be blocking the creek. And then, once a year, they organize a major community cleanup.”
Volunteers patrol waterways for debris in addition to organizing the annual cleanups. Over the past several years, they have removed more than 85,000 pounds of trash from creeks feeding into the bay.
“Oysters used to be all over the bay, and now there’s basically no natural oysters in the bay,” Sylvestri said. “We have oyster farms, but no naturally occurring oysters. So we’re looking to reverse that.”
Because a single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, restoring oyster reefs could significantly improve water quality.
Nassau’s North Shore
Environmental advocates say that conditions in Hempstead Harbor have improved significantly over the past several decades, though pollution from runoff, septic systems and aging infrastructure still affects nearby communities.
The harbor connects to Glen Cove Creek and several tributaries along the North Shore, and serves as both an ecological system and a drainage outlet for the surrounding watershed.
“We have a long-term water monitoring program, which is really the backbone of what we do,” Michelle Lapinel McAllister, programs director for the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor, said. “We’ve had consistent and uninterrupted monitoring since 1992.”
Researchers collect water samples year-round to measure nitrogen, bacteria and dissolved oxygen. “The main issues come down to nutrient pollution, bacteria and plastic pollution,” McAllister said.
Nitrogen pollution remains a persistent challenge, because excess nutrients can fuel algal blooms that reduce oxygen levels in the water.
Despite those challenges, the harbor has improved. In 2011, roughly 2,500 acres of shellfish beds reopened after being closed for more than 40 years because of high bacteria levels.
Oyster restoration has also helped improve water quality. Through partnerships with volunteers and federal grants, the coalition has planted more than 1.7 million oysters in Hempstead Harbor since 2022.
Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton said that wastewater infrastructure remains a concern on the North Shore, where many communities still rely on septic systems.
“90 percent of Nassau County is sewered, and out of the 10 percent that is not sewered, 90 percent is in my district,” DeRiggi-Whitton said.
County officials have also targeted pollution flowing from Scutter’s Pond, in Sea Cliff, once identified as a major contamination source for Hempstead Harbor. Officials installed a catch basin and weir system designed to filter runoff before it reaches the harbor.
“It’s basically a filter,” DeRiggi-Whitton said. “It just skims the water and takes out the pollutants that would go into Hempstead Harbor.” The roughly $250,000 project significantly reduced the amount of contamination entering the harbor.
Assemblyman Charles Lavine said that flooding in Glen Cove in 2024 illustrated how stormwater moves through the landscape. “Any groundwater that collects as a result of storms is going to find its way toward the lowest point,” Lavine said. “That’s gravity.”
Residents of Glen Cove’s Woolsey Avenue say they have repeatedly experienced flooding during major storms.
“The water isn’t just rain — it’s runoff from other streets, and it’s filled with garbage and bacteria,” resident Linda Melbinger said. “We’ve had dead animals in our yard in the past, and there’s a layer of contamination on everything that smells.”
“It impacts so many things,” McAllister said. “Everyone moves here because they want the beauty of the harbor, but it’s only going to be beautiful to the extent that you take care of it and you have a healthy and thriving harbor.”
The harbor, she said, supports local recreation, fishing and the broader coastal ecosystem.
“As good citizens,” McAllister said, “we have to make sure that we’re doing our part to respect the harbor and everything it has to offer.”
