The Village of Bronxville will receive a $4.375 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration to fix a repeated flooding problem near Midland Avenue and Pondfield Road that has caused millions in damage to school buildings.
The grant, announced today by U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, who helped secure the money as part of her work as a senior member of the House’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, will pay for the creation of a drainage system.
The project includes the campus of the Bronxville Union Free School District as well as about 50 nearby homes. Part of Westchester County’s Bronx River Reservation lands are also included.
The plan is to construct a new drainage and storage system under the natural turf atheltic fields on the east side of the school campus. A pump station will be built on the southern boundary of the campus next to Midland Avenue to send stormwater runoff from the storage system into the Bronx River.
The goal is to protect the area from the kind of severe storms and floods that have caused extensive damage in recent years.
School was delayed a day in 2011 after waist-high water flooded into the first floor of the Bronxville School in the wake of Hurricane Irene. The $5 million in damages was on top of $22 million in repairs an earlier flood cost the school district in 2007.
Bronxville Mayor Mary C. Marvin, in a statement, said the project will protect the school and neighboring residences during severe storms in the future.
The Bronxville School suffered damage after 4 to 5 feet of water flooded the property when Hurricane Irene hit the region last August. File photo.
1 Comment
I wish the NY State Government or FEMA would help out the Brooklands Apartment complex in Yonkers at the Bronxville border. While I am sorry that the kids in Bronxville had to miss a day of school, the same flooding destroyed 24 ground-floor apartments at Brooklands, leaving their owners homeless for nearly a year. How can we get a grant to protect ourselves better? We’ve rebuilt but there is nothing to keep the same thing from happening again after the next hurricane or tropical storm or spring nor’easter.