Few Solutions at Under-Attended Flood Presentation

A meeting about flooding was held at Greenburgh Town Hall by Westchester County Legislator MaryJane Shimsky, who represents the Town of Greenburgh’s District 12. Sadly, Alfreda Williams, the (non)representative for District 8, was not present nor is involved with the flooding work Shimsky has been doing. Her portion of the district covers the Bronx River area, which Shimsky has inspected and admitted this evening is worse off than the Saw Mill River area. The meeting had maybe twenty people in the audience, including the media.


This presentation rehashed information that had been offered previously by many politicians, including Shimsky. Although, there was a portion of the presentation that was done by Emily Vail, an estuary watershed outreach specialist with the NYS Department of Conservation, who focused on solutions being used more in underdeveloped areas upstate and at school campus’ than in developed areas such as Westchester. Surely a recent, albeit perky, college graduate, who annoyingly started every sentence with, “So…”, she had her own Powerpoint presentation with various green initiatives information in it. We applaud her concern for environmental issues. Ostensibly well indoctrinated in college, she alluded to the need to legislate green compliance and of course, threw in climate change as a verifiable cause for our flooding! Her message was acknowledged primarily by the representatives of the Greenburgh Nature Center when she queried who in the audience knew of the points she was discussing. 


While ABG believes in supporting and utilizing green solutions, which are typically more costly than “less” green solutions, we also feel they should be performed voluntarily rather than by legal mandate. With the tenuous economic fragility of our economy, do we really want to be mandating more requirements for business, possibly leading them into closure? ABG believes not and would welcome incentives as a better way to achieve compliance.

Shimsky’s slide presentation detailed some of the problems we’re facing and what can be done in the short and long term. Highlighting both low impact and high impact solutions seemed to be a positive part of her presentation. We’ve heard some of this from her and others before. She discussed the severe economic impact due to the loss of not being able to get to work in the flooded areas, and discussed water runoff due to the overdevelopment of the area without a corresponding upgrade of the infrastructure! Kudos to her for stating what residents have been critical of from The Paul and his Stepford Board - overdevelopment in Greenburgh! While she did state the obvious, she also detailed how the small rivers and streams in the area and their contribution of increased water levels to the area and the cumulative affect it is having on the real estate market as well as the taxables in the area. 

She continued to stress our infrastructure is overwhelmed and under-maintained, causing water to backup in the two main focal points, the Saw Mill River and the Bronx River, again, with the Bronx River being worse off than the Saw Mill. She also stated that all communities in the paths of these rivers must participate in trying to maintain the existing infrastructure. She gave an example of a storm drain that was completely covered and not recognized as being known. When she questioned Greenburgh’s Public Works Commissioner, Victor Carosi, he stated it wasn’t a Greenburgh drain. She did some more research and found it was a neglected drain owned by the county, and said if there is one unknown and unmaintained drain, how many more might there be? She continued that the County is currently doing an infrastructure inventory. ABG wonders how they “might” not know about it! To Shimksy’s credit though, she is pursuing the issue.

ABG recognized portions of the information and photos in her presentation that were taken by a resident in a quest to show The Paul where the problem areas were that affected he and his neighbors. Regardless, we applaud Shimsky for using them and not shying from touching on many of the issues that seem to ignored by other politicians. There is much more that needs to be done to alleviate the flooding issues in both sides of the Town. Since The Paul prefers to only talk about it, and Williams remains in the shadows, at least some residents of Greenburgh have an advocate working on their behalf. 

ABG sympathizes with the residents and businesses that were assaulted by Tropical Storms Irene and Lee and hope we can at least see the proper cleanup and maintenance of our existing, if failing, infrastructure. We can only hope.

Some related information touched upon during the evenings presentation can be had at:

www.nrdc.org and www. dec.ny.gov/lands/42053.html/58930