Howard Beach flooding a recurring problem

Howard Beach natives Anthony and Phyllis Stabile, fed up with their neighborhood’s severe flooding problems, plan to install a French drainage system so that they will not have to deal with the mess again.
The system, an in-ground trench or pit that captures groundwater and diverts it to a low spot on the land, could cost anywhere from $4,500 to $7,000.
“It is worth it, believe me,” Phyllis said.
The couple’s furnished basement would have been inundated with water had the couple and their 29-year-old son, Anthony, Jr., not vacuumed every half hour during the spring Nor’easter that pounded the area with rain and caused waters to rise two-and-a-half feet at high tide.
“I couldn’t tell you what would have happened,” Phyllis said. “We kept vacuuming up with the rent-a-vac.”
The Stabiles even set alarms to wake up periodically during the night so that they could continuously clean up the water that seeped into the basement.
“We couldn’t go to sleep, it was a mess,” she said. Basements in Howard Beach are often flooded during heavy rains, she explained, remembering the flooding in October 2005 when 18 inches of water fell over the course of three weeks.
“At that time, you had to do it every 15 minutes,” she said. “That was the worst I had ever seen.”
City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo puts the estimate of the area’s damage at $20,000 based on the number of calls his office has received since the Sunday, April 15 Nor’easter. He explained the low damage figure because the vast majority of the residents who have been in the neighborhood for a while know about the rain and tides - and the area’s lack of adequate drainage - and therefore don’t keep anything valuable in their basements.
According to Addabbo, Old Howard Beach was severely flooded; Lindenwood got some water; Broad Channel was pretty badly affected; and parts of Rockaway were hit hard but not as badly as anticipated.
City Councilmember James Gennaro, chair of the Environmental Protection Committee, said, “The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has proposed spending $20 billion over the next 10 years on environmental infrastructure projects, including sewers. My job as chair, and a Councilmember from Queens, is to make sure that all south-Queens issues like the long-standing drainage problems [in Howard Beach] are adequately addressed in this plan.”
In the meantime, Addabbo said that roads should be re-pitched by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to help alleviate the problem. He advised homeowners to “call my office and work with my staff to see what can be done.”