Mayor Adams visits flood-prone part of Queens, says city has plans to fix it
NEW YORK - New York City Mayor Eric Adams visited a low-lying neighborhood in Queens that took on a lot of water after last Friday's storm.
Adams promised residents that short and long term fixes are coming.
On Friday, the area was swamped. Wednesday, finally, it was mostly dry.
Samantha Lyn lives with her young daughter in the Jewel Streets neighborhood, more commonly called The Hole, that rides the Queens-Brooklyn border.
Lyn explained she used a garbage bag as pants during the middle of the flooding.
Wednesday afternoon, Adams looked around.
"We have a long-term plan for this area," Adams said.
"What would you ask him to do?" Carlin asked Lyn.
"Fix this street," Lyn said. "Actions speak louder than words. Action."
"We have to think of modern ways of displacing the water after a storm," Adams said.
City officials said building expensive infrastructure is one way to go, but there are other options.
"What we are increasingly doing is working on the surface to retain water," DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said. "So we take a lake, we might deepen it. We connect it to high level storm sewers... instead of flowing into the normal sewers, the rainwaters will go in the lake.
Blue belts and drain gardens slow the flow. A longer term goal is to get some New Yorkers relocated.
"We own 17 acres just a stone's throw from here, where we have the possibility of developing 2,000 units of housing on high ground," HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrion, Jr. said.
