Billions Coming To Rebuild N.Y. Coast
Almost three months to the date after the superstorm known as Hurricane Sandy wiped out coastal areas of New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, a $50 billion relief package cleared its final Congressional hurdle in being passed by the Senate on Monday, Jan. 28.
With the bill signed into law by President Barack Obama, billions of dollars will be sent to New York State to help rebuild thousands of homes and damaged infrastructure while also fortifying the coastline to guard against similar damage from future storms.
It took 13 weeks after Sandy swept through the area on Oct. 29, 2012 for the combined $60 billion in federal government aid to make its way to the Northeast U.S. A package had been passed by the Senate in December before the close of the 112th Congress, but it never reached the floor of the House of Representatives before the session ended on Jan. 2.
Mired in the fiscal cliff saga, the disaster relief bill had been tabled by House Speaker John Boehner as the session drew to a close. This drew the ire of both Republican and Democratic House members from New York and New Jersey. Boehner eventually agreed to bring the package up for a vote in two separate bills in the new 113th Congress, which began its session on Jan. 3.
First, Congress passed a $9 billion bill to fund the National Flood Insurance
Program in order to pay out claims for hurricane victims. The main disaster relief bill, amounting to $50 billion, was passed by the House on Jan. 15.
Once the bill was passed by the Senate on Monday, elected officials in and around New York City expressed relief that the legislative process finally ended, and gratitude for the funding to be sent their way.
“With the Senate’s bipartisan passage of the Hurricane Sandy relief bill, the federal government will finally provide New York City and our neighbors with the assistance that’s rightfully extended to Americans whose lives have been upended by crises and natural disasters,” said MayorMichael Bloomberg in a statement on Monday. “This aid will allow us to better help our residents and businesses, and I want to thank all of those who voted in support of this critical appropriations.”
The three governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut-Andrew Cuomo, Chris Christie and Dannel Malloy, respectively- praised the House in a joint statement after it passed the aid package on Jan. 15, and did so again on Monday after the bill was approved by the Senate.
“Despite the difficult path in getting to this moment, the Senate membership clearly recognized early on the urgency and necessity of approving the full aid package and its importance in rebuilding our battered infrastructure and getting our millions of affected residents back on their feet a quickly as possible,” the governors stated.
Locally, State Sen. Joseph Addabbo said that the package’s final approval “opens the door to allow needed resources to begin flowing to the people and areas who need assistance in rebuilding their lives in the wake of this devastating storm.”
“We need to provide direct aid to those who lost their homes, find ways to rebuild our communities, assist our businesses, rebuild our religious sites, bolster our infrastructure to make it more resilient to future catastrophic storms and other natural disasters, and otherwise help our state and its families to recover from the devastation we ahve suffered,” Addabbo added in his statement released on Tuesday, Jan. 29.
Prior to the bill’s passage, Sen. Charles Schumer issued a press release on Sunday, Jan. 27, outlining the disaster relief bill and the ways in which its funding would be spent locally. Among the highlights are the following:
– The federal government will provide $5.4 billion in funding for emergency and long-term projects currently underway by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineerrs.
– Another $20 million will be used to launch “a comprehensive study to address the flood risks of vulnerable coastal populations” affected by the hurricane.
– Approximately $300 million will be provided for a project study area for the Rockaway Peninsula. According to Schumer, Congress authorized a project to restore the 6.2-mile long beach between Beach 19th and Beach 149th streets to its original dimensions of between 100 and 200 feet in length and 10 feet in elevation.
