NY Rising begins flood relief project in West Islip

A $1.3 million project funded by NY Rising to relieve current and anticipated future flooding in West Islip has begun with a $300,000 contract awarded last week by the Islip Town Board to a Bohemia environmental engineering firm to come up with a communitywide drainage plan.

The firm, P.W. Grosser Consulting, was chosen from a pool of 10 architectural and engineering firms that submitted responses to a request for proposals advertised by the town, according to the resolution.

A committee conducted a "thorough review" of all the proposals and recommended that P.W. Grosser be awarded the contract, the resolution states, after the firm was given the most points on the rating system outlined in the proposal request.

A voice mail request for comment left at P.W. Grosser Consulting was not returned.

The hamlet has suffered from "repetitive" flooding that occurs below Montauk Highway -- inundating homes, roadways and yards -- when waters from the Great South Bay rise over bulkheads and back up through drainage outfalls, as well as when stormwaters flood creeks. An undersized subsurface drainage system further complicates matters, according to the NY Rising Community Reconstruction Plan.

Officials perceive this project to be a long-term solution that could last anywhere from 15 to 50 years. It includes a study of the overall drainage system, including the pipes, pumps, catch basins, canals and creek corridors.

Public involvement will be a part of the overall plan to be designed by the engineers, officials said. There will also be a systemwide assessment, modeling and field work that could include a visual inspection of creeks, outfalls and catch basins. A pipeline video inspection will also be used to examine drainage systems in an effort to identify where the pipes fail and where bottlenecks occur.

The project's remaining $1 million will go toward upgrades to the system that could include targeted road raising, improved outfall structures, rehabilitation of West Islip's creek corridors and an additional drainage pump, according to the NY Rising website. The $1 million figure is broken into categories: $640,000 for hard costs such as materials, labor and equipment rentals; $200,000 for contingency; and $160,000 for soft costs such as engineering and design, construction inspection and permitting.