Mill Creek Road in Head of the Harbor to be rebuilt after August storm

Work started this week to rebuild Mill Creek Road in the Village of Head of the Harbor after a portion was washed away by floodwaters in August, restricting access to seven homes.

The private road is owned by the nonprofit Ward Melville Heritage Organization. Water from an Aug. 18-19 storm, which dropped more than 10 inches of rain on Long Island’s North Shore, flooded the pond below the road, destroying about 160 feet of the roadway.

“It truly was a disaster," said Gloria Rocchio, president of the heritage organization, which is paying to repair the road for an undisclosed cost. She said she will seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency under a federal disaster declaration for nonprofits and public infrastructure. (The agency recently denied a request for aid to individuals.)

Contractors from the Manorville-based Excav Services on Friday began clearing debris from the road, including fallen trees. Broken and fallen asphalt will also have to be removed from the hillside and the pond, which was drained when a dam collapsed during the storm.

The water pressure that broke the dam under nearby Harbor Road in Stony Brook destroyed a narrow section of Mill Creek Road.

Workers will also have to stabilize the hillside. The project, designed by Hauppauge-based VHB Engineering, is expected to take up to two months, said Excav Services vice president Dylan Governale.

Mill Creek Road was the only access point to homes in the neighborhood. For more than a month, services such as trash pickup and mail delivery were cut off.

Village police had also issued an evacuation order, warning residents they could not be reached by emergency vehicles. The village and the Town of Smithtown highway department completed a $170,000 temporary paved emergency access road in October that connected behind the homes to Emmet Drive.

Daniel Kinney, who has lived on the road for 26 years, said he was relieved to have a sense of normalcy after his home was isolated for weeks. He said mail and trash pickup has been restored and he recently received a home heating oil delivery.

“That was a pretty big disaster and not an overnight fix. Things are pretty much back to normal,” Kinney said. He hoped that any repairs would address present-day concerns.

"They should fix it better and build for the future," he said. "They have to upgrade this.”

Kinney said the hillside below the road has been eroding for the past decade. He also worried about what would happen if a fire broke out, specifically how firefighters could access the narrow road and the fact that homes there use well water.

“With all these power lines and branches falling, it’s ripped the wires off my house,” Kinney said. “If there’s a fire, this whole place will go up.”

Mayor Michael Utevsky said the project is designed to prevent further erosion while the hillside is supported with stone and pilings.

“It’s great to know the Ward Melville Heritage Organization is working with homeowners and the village to restore normal access,” Utevsky said. “Erosion is happening all around us — on beaches and Stony Brook Harbor. We all hope there won’t be a storm quite this bad, but we need to have more resilient infrastructure.”

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.