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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Flood Mitigation Project Delay Update

As by now you are that we have been advised that the Flood Mitigation/Street Raising Project for W11th, 12th and 13th Roads has been delayed for a year pending design of a new street drainage system for this project.

Obviously, all of the residents of the affected streets find this delay both unacceptable in light of the many hours of work and meetings that were expended by all of us in our attempt to bring this project to fruition  and distasteful as there has been little or no communication from the city regarding the projects status since October 29th when Sandy's storm surge almost destroyed our community.

This lack of communication was exacerbated when Commissioner Maura McCarthy (Queens DOT) suddenly retired and no city official stood up to grasp the reins of this project and oversee its implementation.

All of our elected officials (Joe Addabbo, Helen Marshall, Phil Goldfeder and Eric Ulrich) have been made aware of this issue and are in the process of reaching out to the appropriate city agencies to ascertain what is transpiring with this project to cause this "delay".  Dan Mundy advised all such officials that this delay is "Totally unacceptable.  We want a meeting forthwith to discuss.  They must keep to the original schedule - and even sped it up, no excuses.  This is a top priority.  How much do these people need to suffer?"

As I stated in a previous post, DOT, DEP and DDC were already re-examining the projects street drainage system design last summer well before Hurricane Sandy struck our community.  In a phone conversation with (then) DOT Commissioner McCarthy I was assured that this review of street drainage would not impact the projects time line.

Unfortunately, subsequent to Hurricane Sandy I was only in contact with Commissioner McCarthy on one occasion after which she retired with no communication forthcoming from DOT as to who would be acting in her stead.

All of us who are intimately involved with this project will, with the assistance of our elected officials, aggressively pursue all measures to get this project back on track and we will keep you advised of all matters and issues pertaining to same.

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