Cedarhurst holds hearing on proposed sea wall as part of Lawrence High School renovation

A plan to protect Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst has raised alarm among neighbors who fear a proposed sea wall around the property will exacerbate their existing flooding problems.

A village hearing scheduled for Thursday night will be the last opportunity for residents to voice their concerns about the project as part of the environmental review.

The project has pitted the Lawrence School District — where it’s seen as a rare opportunity to rehabilitate the school using federal funds — against the village government and residents on Park Lane, where residents and the village mayor say flooding is already a recurring challenge.

The high school campus takes up most of a peninsula jutting into Jamaica Bay, flanked by two creeks. The sea wall is part of a proposed $75 million project to protect and rehabilitate the school property that was damaged in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy.

The sea wall would be made of reinforced concrete rising from steel piles, according to the proposal. The wall would rise to about the height of an existing chain link fence around the property. Excess rainwater will be collected in three underground chambers and then gradually pumped out. Most of the funding will come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“All the floodwaters that would normally go on to the school property are now going to have no place to go except on the adjoining properties,” Cedarhurst Mayor Benjamin Weinstock said in an interview. “So the adjoining properties are likely to see a high degree of additional flooding because of the sea wall.”

Weinstock said the pumping stations would push hundreds of gallons of water back into the bay where the increased water could affect residents.

“The defect in the environmental report is that it never studied the effect on the neighbors,” Weinstock said.

Lawrence school board president Murray Forman said the sea wall is necessary for FEMA to provide funding for the entire project, which includes revamping the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, turf fields and gut renovation of the high school.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild our high school,” Murray said.

Murray said the sea wall and the pumping system won’t cause flooding onto neighboring properties.

“We can only do it [the project] in a fashion that causes no harm, which we believe we've done,” Murray said in an interview. “We may not be fixing an existing problem that somebody might have but we're not exacerbating it either.”

The public comment period on the environmental report is over. But FEMA spokesman Donald Caetano said the agency told Weinstock that if the village held a public hearing, it could then submit information to FEMA by the end of March. The public hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Village Hall.

Residents on Park Lane, where last weekend’s rainstorm caused waters to surge over sidewalks, said they want any plan for the high school to protect their homes as well.

“I understand they want to protect the school and they can do that, but they just have to take care of the homes that are on the water,” said Naema Sharon, 49, who owns a spa in the village.

Sharon, who said Sandy wiped out their first floor in 2012, said the project should include funds for Park Lane residents to raise bulkheads and raise their homes to protect against flooding. “You can’t touch one side of the waterway and not the other.”