Once again, residents of Washingtonville neighborhood in the Village of Mamaroneck woke to the ominous hum of pumps draining water from homes and businesses.
Sunday morning large piles of flood-destroyed belongings lined sidewalks on Madison Avenue as residents cleaned up and attempted to recover just two years after Hurricane Ida devastated the low lying neighborhood.
The Community Resource Centers has identified four families who have suffered displacement and another twenty four families who have suffered significant damage.
The Village released this information:
During the height of the storm, between 10:30am and 7:30pm, over 160 emergency calls were made from Village residents needing assistance.
Approximately 50 families were evacuated at the height of the storm.
Basements at 62 residences, two churches, and the non-profit Community Resource Center were flooded and pumped out throughout the weekend by five diligent teams from the Village’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and Fire Department. Mamaroneck is the only municipality along Westchester’s Sound Shore that pumps out residences.
All Village streets were open on Saturday morning, less than 24-hours after Friday’s storm. Street cleaners were out throughout the weekend and are continuing to clean Village streets.
Recent efforts the Village has made to clean, maintain, and dredge the Mamaroneck and Sheldrake Rivers allowed Friday’s heavy rains to move more swiftly and unimpeded into the Mamaroneck Harbor and the Long Island Sound.
Since March 2022, the Village has used $2.7 million in tax-payer funds, in addition to $1.2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that was awarded to the Village from the White House, to clean, maintain, purchase equipment, and dredge the Mamaroneck and Sheldrake Rivers, thus making our community more flood resilient. That investment paid off on Friday and lessened this disaster.
On the horizon
More work to mitigate flooding in the Village is being done.
The first phase of the federally funded and managed $100,000,000 Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) Flood Risk Management Project is set to begin this December 2023 at the Ward Avenue Bridge and will continue working its way north up the Mamaroneck River. While the Village of Mamaorneck does not control this ACE project, the Village is collaborating with the Army Corps to make this project the cornerstone in making our community more flood resistant in the future.
In the days and weeks ahead
Residents who have questions or require assistance may call the Village’s Emergency Operations Center at 914-825-8773, between 9am and 5pm. The EOC will continue to be in operation until Wednesday, October 4.
