In the coming months National Grid crews will install a new gas main along a 1.8-mile stretch of the northern Long Island Expressway service road from Pinetree Lane in Old Westbury through East Hills to Jefferson Avenue in Roslyn Heights.
Mayor Michael Koblenz of East Hills said work is scheduled at night, from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Friday beginning Aug. 15, and construction is expected to be finished in December.
“I don’t know what that traffic is going to look like,” Koblenz said. “All I can do is warn everybody.”
Residents who live on streets along the planned construction route are encouraged to take a different route home but will be allowed along the one lane reserved for emergency vehicles and residents only during construction.
“We required them to go house to house for the people that were immediately affected by it and advise them of what’s going on,” Koblenz said. “Residents should not be inconvenienced except for the noise, the drilling and the jackhammers at 2 in the morning — no one’s looking forward to that. It’s not quiet work.”
East Hills officials announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with National Grid in 2015 to extend village gas lines at no cost to any resident who chooses to convert to gas service from oil. Previously, homeowners converting to gas who lived more than 100 feet from a gas main were charged extra for the extension of a gas line, officials said.
The project was first considered in late October 2013 when East Hills resident Jana Goldenberg began taking names of residents in the area who would switch to gas if given the opportunity to connect to a main.
Wendy Ladd, a spokeswoman for National Grid, said part of the village already had access to natural gas before the project began, and once completed, the village will have over 80,000 feet, or 15 miles, of new gas main.
