Harbor Repair Funds Secured
By Daniel Wagner, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Jul. 30–It took years of lobbying and unprecedented collaboration between North Shore and federal elected officials, but the City of Glen Cove and the Town of North Hempstead have finally secured federal authorization for $10 million in improvements to Hempstead Harbor.
“It’s a great success for Hempstead Harbor and all the communities around it, and I’m glad I’m part of the effort — not just to help Glen Cove, but to help the North Shore, to help Hempstead Harbor,” Glen Cove Mayor Ralph Suozzi said yesterday.
The authorization was inserted into the long-delayed Water Resource Development Act last week, shortly before the bill cleared the conference committee. The reconciled version will now face votes by both houses of Congress.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who sat on the joint committee, said the bill was “a long time coming” — it had been hamstrung by a number of disputes since 2000 — but “the redevelopment is a priority for the community and this is a critical step in getting them the federal support they need.”
The money, which the Army Corps of Engineers will spend on beach replenishment, dredging, flood mitigation and other projects, has not yet been appropriated — meaning that it could take additional time and political maneuvering to move any plan forward.
But Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman said the bill’s passage out of conference was a crucial first step toward transforming the waterfront from a polluted and largely abandoned industrial wasteland into a public resource that will support residential development and recreation.
After years of lobbying in Washington, he said, “We realized that asking for help with our individual community wasn’t doing it. But looking at the harbor as a single entity” made it possible for Clinton and Sen. Charles Schumer to achieve “even greater success than we expected.”
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