Plandome Manor Building Inspector Edward Butt said at the village’s board of trustees meeting Tuesday that a solution to fix flooding near the Town of North Hempstead-owned North Plandome Road has been submitted to the town for review.
Butt said he and officials from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation visited Leeds Pond, the source of the flooding, and determined that three catch-basins built into the pond, combined with the phragmite grass the grows nearby, would create a stronger blockage of water that would help curb flooding.
“This is something that right now, is almost more severe than the culvert,” Butt said at the July 16 board meeting.
Leeds Pond is also owned by the Town of North Hempstead.
The issue is considered significant, Trustee Irwin Klein said, with hurricane season approaching.
“That is getting worse. Every time it rains it takes longer and longer to drain,” Klein said.
Butt said that he had recently spoken to engineers at the Mineola-based Sidney Bowne & Son, who told him the firm is very close to finishing its engineering report for the culvert on a potential recommendation for remediation or reconstruction.
Butt said he expects the report within the next two weeks.
“If that report comes out and it does confirm what he said to you while you were standing inside of it, which is that these walls may not be able to support what’s on top of it, I think that’s pretty powerful,” said Village of Plandome Mayor Barbara Donno.
But North Plandome Road and the culvert are not the only sites of the village’s drainage issues.
Harold and Marion Grobe, of 89 Circle Drive, sent a letter to the board of trustees regarding an underground drainpipe whose spillage, they say, has eroded their property.
William DiConza, the Grobes’ representative at the board meeting, said that the water has caused a five-foot crater to form on the Grobe’s property, and requested the pipe be extended 18 feet past the Grobe’s property line, which would cause the water to spill out on Nassau County property.
Donno said that the Grobe’s moved onto the property in 1979, knowing that the pipe was there, and successfully worked to extend it in the early 2000s.
“There is no more communication from them once that pipe was extended, now all of a sudden they’re not happy where they originally agreed that pipe should go,” Donno said.
DiConza said the drainpipe’s purpose is to move water from Circle Drive into Leeds Pond, which recently has not worked efficiently enough.
“If we can find a more efficient way… so that the public water doesn’t sit on private property, I think that’s what they’re seeking,” said DiConza.
Donno said that she had some questions for the Grobes with regard to the pipe and its extension, but Deputy Mayor Matthew Clinton said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t explore the option of extending the pipe and at least initiating a dialogue with the county of Nassau and see if that would be acceptable.”
