4 The Courier sun • OCTOBER 30, 2014 for breaking news visit www.couriersun.com THE COURIER/Photo by Salvatore Licata Sandy town hall hosted in the Rockaways BY SALVATORE LICATA [email protected]/@Sal_Licata1 It has been two years since Superstorm Sandy ravaged SANDY RECOVERY TWO YEARS LATER BY SALVATORE LICATA [email protected]/@Sal_Licata1 Throughout the city, repair efforts from Superstorm Sandy have been slow, but with a recent overhaul in the Build It Back system many residents are finally seeing progress. “What has made Build It Back work since the Mayor’s overhaul is increased flexibility for homeowners, increased communication with homeowners and an increased presence by our staff in Sandyimpacted communities,” said Amy Peterson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery. “We have expanded our outreach to Queens, as we have to all affected neighborhoods, and have made over 2,800 offers to Queens residents.” Throughout the city, there are 14,000 applicants in the Build It Back program. In Queens, 2,800 offers have been made, 1,790 have been accepted and 652 homes are in the design phase as of Oct. 28. There have also been 247 construction starts with 54 completed and 356 checks offered totaling $7.3 million. These numbers are promising, said state Sen. Joe Addabbo, but he added that recovery is nowhere near finished. “The Build It Back system can’t work fast enough for my constituents,” Addabbo said. “I will continue to work with the program and help individuals recover. It is moving but we have a long way to go.” Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder also said that he is encouraged by the commitment to Sandy recovery and that it will remain a top priority until everyone who was displaced from the storm is back in their homes. “As we approach the second anniversary of Sandy, many families are still not home and struggling to put their lives back together,” said Goldfeder. “No one is going away and we have a lot of work left to do but the city is committed to it.” There are also some residents who have traveled down the long road of recovery and are finally seeing action. “After Sandy, my house was red stickered deemed as unlivable and later demolished,” said Jayme Galimi, who has been a resident of Broad Channel for 22 years. “It’s been a long road since then but my new home is finally going to be constructed with the funding from Build It Back.” southern Queens and though the recovery process is slow, it is moving in the right direction, city officials said at a town hall meeting in Rockaway. “We are approaching the two-year anniversary of Sandy and still people are struggling,” said Councilman Eric Ulrich. “We wanted to give the community a chance to hear about the recovery process and ask their questions directly to the city agencies.” The meeting, which was hosted by Ulrich and Councilman Donavan Richards at Beach Channel High School in Rockaway on Oct. 27, provided updates on the state of the Rockaway boardwalk, ferry service, street and light repairs, Build It Back numbers, FEMA insurance and other programs presented by representatives of the DOT, EDC, DEP, Parks Department, Build It Back and the Mayor’s office. “Sandy highlighted many of the vulnerabilities that we had in the city,” said Dan Zarrilli, director of Recovery and Resiliency in the Mayor’s Office. He added that his agency is working on strengthening coastal defenses through sand replenishment and bulkhead expansion while also lobbying the federal government to keep FEMA insurance at an affordable price for residents. Amy Peterson, director of Build It Back, said that even though the agency is not where it needs to be, much progress has been made. Since January, there have been 750 construction starts and 1,000 checks issued throughout the city. When it came to the DEP, Emily Lloyd, director of the agency, said they inspected 51 miles of storm sewers on the Rockaway peninsula running from Arverne to Neponsit and added that there was minimal damage to the water mains in the area. She also said that the agency is working on minimizing the crude smell of the Rockaway Wastewater Treatment Plant, located on Beach 107th Street and Beach Channel Drive, via odor control and an upgraded filtration system but said there will never be absolutely no smell. Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver gave a muchanticipated update on the Rockaway boardwalk. He said that the construction of the boardwalk, which was started in April, will be finished by Memorial Day of 2017. He added that when finished this boardwalk will “rival all others in the world.” The DOT, represented by Queens Borough Commissioner Dalila Hall, has allotted $2 million for resurfacing work throughout southern Queens. Hall also said the agency is diligently repairing street lights and traffic signals, which were damaged from Sandy, and is working on getting Select Bus Service to the Rockaways as the need for transportation became apparent in the wake of the storm. Finally, Kyle Kimball, president of NYCEDC, gave news that met with much uproar from residents. The Rockaway ferry service, which was put in as a temporary transportation method after Superstorm Sandy, will be ending this month. He mentioned that the $5 million a year it would take to run the service was not in the city’s budget. Councilman Richards said that even though the city still has a long way to go in the recovery process, two years after the storm hit, progress has been made. “Our communities still need repairs,” Richards noted. “But the stronger we remain together, the more likely the entire community will be rebuilt.”
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