Deal struck for emergency road to Head of the Harbor homes

The Village of Head of the Harbor has reached an agreement with the Town of Smithtown and homeowners for an emergency access route to serve seven residences on Mill Creek Road after the road washed out in last month's flood.

Head of the Harbor Mayor Michael Utevsky said the village and town officials came to an agreement to build the access road through an easement on private property from Mill Creek Road to Emmet Drive, which connects to Harbor Road.

Mill Creek Road was the only road accessible to seven homes before it was flooded along the hillside and became inaccessible.

Utevsky said construction could begin Tuesday and is expected to take less than a week.

"We're finally seeing progress on all fronts," the mayor said Monday, just over a month after floodwaters from the Aug. 18-19 storms broke through a dam and also destroyed a section of Harbor Road connecting to Main Street in Stony Brook Village.

Construction costs were not immediately available.

Smithtown Highway crews gathered at the end of Emmet Drive on Monday morning where they surveyed backyards the emergency route would cut through to allow access to Mill Creek Road homes below.

Mill Creek Road is privately owned by the Ward Melville Heritage Organization, which has been working separately with an engineering firm to rebuild it the coming weeks.

Private engineers were surveying the road Monday and the muddy lake bed of Mill Pond where the road would be rebuilt.

An evacuation order for the residents on the road was still in place Monday due to inaccessibility for emergency vehicles, but police and local residents said the order is not actively being enforced.

Several residents off Mill Creek Road have said they resorted to towing wagons of their belongings, or bags of garbage on trash pickup days, up the hill on Harbor Road where vehicles must stop. They have placards identifying themselves as residents in the windows of their parked cars.

The residents must collect their mail at the post office and worry about deliveries of heating oil as winter approaches

Mill Creek Road resident Thomas Rubio said the temporary road is going through the back of his property.

Something needed to be done, Rubio said.

"There’s a woman here with a walker, there’s an elderly gentleman that lives on this road," he said. "They need to get in."

With Janon Fisher