City to Install New Main, Drains to Fix Flooding

This story is the first in a series on the City of Long Beach's announced plans to address storm and flood issues.   

The installation of a force main and leach fields are among a series of projects the City of Long Beach is embarking on to address storm-related flooding after Hurricane Sandy battered the beach town last October. 

Jim LaCarrubba, the city’s commissioner of public works, said the city is studying a project that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers performed in West Virginia that employed a force main, a pressure pipe that joins a pump discharge at a water pumping station with a point of gravity flow. The city plans to build a force main that would collect storm water, send it to two pump points in the West End, and force the storm water into Reynolds Channel.

“We would be able to push the water out of the storm system as opposed to letting it sit in the system and wait for the tide to go out and the valves to open, and then the water can release,” LaCarrubba told residents at a West End Neighbors Civic Association meeting at the West End Community Center Sept. 18.

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In addition the city will start to install leach fields, or septic-type drains, at bioretention areas in Long Beach, specifically the grassy medians at the center of streets, LaCarrubba said. The first leach field is slated for installation this fall on West Hudson Street in the West Holme neighborhood.

“We’re going to dig some of those up and we’re going to put leaching fields underneath to actually hold some of the storm water, so that it has a place to go before it goes out into the channel, so it’s not sitting in the roadways,” LaCarrubba said.

Turning to the problem of the city’s backed-up storm drains, which were infiltrated with sand during Hurricane Sandy, LaCarrubba said that even before Sandy the city's storm drain system had problems, during nor’easters and even heavy rain storms. Since Sandy, the New York State Department of Transportation has twice helped the city blow sand out of all the storm sewer lines to get the system running again. “We put in a request to have them come back again,” the commissioner added.

The city is also about to purchase a second vactor sewer cleaning truck since the existing truck, nearly a decade old, has run into numerous mechanical failures since the storm.

“We’ll put one into lighter use and rely more on the new one to help clean our storm drain system,” LaCarrubba said. “It is something we’re very, very cognizant of and we’re working towards doing whatever we can to clear the system.”

The city has applied for $175 million in grant funds from the Hazard Mitigation Program, of which $110 million is slated for storm water infrastructure improvements, LaCarrubba said.

On Tuesday, the City Council will vote on a proposed contract with the Wyandanch-based Philip Ross Industries (PRI) for the reconstruction of the Indiana Avenue Pump Station. The city said the station, which is integral to the city’s sanitary sewer system, was flooded and damaged during Sandy and remains inoperable, and PRI will clean and remove debris from the system and demolish and replace the mechanical and electrical systems at a cost of $460,000.  

“This is the third pump station that has required rehabilitation as a result of flooding and damage caused by Superstorm Sandy,” reads a legislative memo that accompanies the resolution. “In order to maintain sewage flow and continue providing services, the city has had to bypass the facilities. Funding is being requested through public assistance grant monies from FEMA.”

Patch will post the second story in this series Wednesday.