Broad Channel builds its resiliency

Electeds celebrate $46 million project to reduce area’s flooding

• by Max Parrott, Associate Editor - Queens Chronicle

After more than five years of planning and construction, on Tuesday the city celebrated the completion of the first phase of a resiliency project in Broad Channel aimed at combating chronic flooding that has plagued the neighborhood for years.

The $46 million project has so far raised the street level from West 11th to West 13th roads and added almost half a mile of new storm sewers to reduce flooding in an area that is frequently inundated by Jamaica Bay during high tides and storms.

Administrators involved in the project, which was managed by the departments of Design and Construction for the Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection, gathered a group of elected and civic leaders on Tuesday who marveled at the project’s progress.

Part of the project involved removing curbing from the street, in an unorthodox street plan that took meeting after meeting with civic leaders to bring them on board with the concept.

State Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) said it was a miracle that it all worked out.

“This project had every ingredient not to happen: between the moving parts of multiple agencies, $46 million at a time when the city is not doing well financially, catch basins, storm sewers, bulkheads — this project had every reason not to happen in our lifetime. But it did,” Addabbo said.

Phase 2 of the work, a $67.7 million project that will extend from West 14th to West 17th roads, began this summer and is anticipated to be completed in summer 2024.

The project is designed to protect Broad Channel’s residences against the rising sea level caused by climate change. Beyond raising the street up, it created a system of storm drains and catch basins that prevents flooding by funneling runoff into Jamaica Bay.

“If there ever was a wake-up call, it was Hurricane Sandy. It not only woke up the people not only in this community but all across the city that climate change is real,” said Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park). “We’ve got to put the shovel in the ground and put money in the budget and come up with creative solutions.”

Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Rockaway Park) added to the sentiment by pointing out that constituents on the peninsula and in Broad Channel have been living there for generations.

“Investing in our communities surrounded by water is important because we’re not moving,” Pheffer Amato said.

All three representatives also expressed their appreciation for Broad Channel Civic Association President Dan Mundy Jr. and his father, Dan Mundy Sr., who led the effort from the community side and put in countless hours to make sure the project suited their needs.

To execute the project, the three roads jutting out from Cross Bay Boulevard west to the waterline were all rebuilt from the ground up on more piles of material driven 50 feet or more into the ground.

The new streets are approximately 2 feet higher than before and now have 2,300 feet of new storm sewers with nine new catch basins, plus new bulkheads and outfalls that were added at the end of each roadway to allow stormwater to drain into the bay.

Another six existing catch basins were replaced at Cross Bay Boulevard. Sanitary sewers and water mains were also replaced as part of the project.