County Executive Ed Day announces start of $1 million repair project on Minisceongo Creek

PRESS RELEASE– Rockland County is about to start a $1 million project to repair a creek embankment in West Haverstraw damaged by a hurricane more than five years ago, County Executive Ed Day has announced.

The embankment stabilization project on the Minisceongo Creek just upstream of Samsondale Plaza is being undertaken by the Rockland County Drainage Agency.

“Hurricane Irene hit the Minisceongo Creek in West Haverstraw particularly hard,” the County Executive said. “There was extensive damage and our goal is to fix it as part of our efforts to maintain our infrastructure.”

The Drainage Agency secured $3.1 million in FEMA reimbursements for multiple projects in Rockland to repair damage from the 2011 hurricane.

The Minisceongo project will be paid for through that FEMA funding.

This project will include reconstruction of broken gabion baskets, stabilization of gabion baskets that are leaning into the creek, and soil nailing of these and other areas, according to Vincent Altieri, executive director of the Drainage Agency.

These improvements will be made in conjunction with related work completed by the county’s partners.

They include the village of West Haverstraw, which relocated a municipal storm drain downstream of the destabilized area, and NRG, Inc., which stabilized a major section of the stream bank and armored areas to protect infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Irene.

The project was designed by Bergmann Associates of Rochester and is being constructed by OCS Industries of Middletown.

Construction inspection services will be provided by KS Engineers with offices in Manhattan.

The project is scheduled to begin in March and be completed in the fall of 2017.

The new project comes after the recent completion of a bank stabilization project on the Minisceongo Creek just to the east of Route 9W in West Haverstraw, which was also damaged by Hurricane Irene.

The Drainage Agency completed that project on time and under budget at approximately $825,000.