Written By: Joseph Maffettone
Seaford deals with the issues of flooding and rainstorms that plague the town with residents discussing about how it affect them and how the problems are fixed.
Seaford is a small town in Nassau County that constantly suffers issues that involve the rain and multiple floodings a year around the summer and spring. While many Long Island towns would suffer from similar issues with rainstorms and floods, Seaford has been dealing with these issues since hurricane Sandy and to this day, there hasn’t been any fixes to prevent the floodings from causing damage and reaching people’s houses. Sal Maffettone, Michelle Kuffo, and Joe Sanfilippo came out and discussed their thoughts and concerns with how rainstorms and floodings affect their houses and the town they live in. While Seaford is a very nice town, the issue of flooding has left people in the town wanting a fix for a long time.
To start, how does the rainstorms that caused these floods in the first, affect the people living in Seaford. Joe Sanfilippo said the following, “Storms and flooding have a big impact on all of us that live in Seaford Long Island. Since where we live is close to the water table, any big storm can easily cause major flooding in our streets to the point where it can ruin our cars and/or prevent us from being able to leave our home. Some neighbors even get water in their basements which can cause major issues not only to their homes but put a financial strain on making repairs constantly.” The fact that this can happen is really upsetting, and to makes things worse, last year there was a similar issue where the flooding ruined the engines of some cars and blocked off my entire road for hours to the point where me, my father and brothers has to come outside, use our cars to blockade the road till police arrived and help move those cars out of the water. Speaking of my father, Sal Maffettone said that since we live adjacent to a freshwater stream, when a heavy rainfall or severe storm comes, we are almost guaranteed some type of flooding. Finally, Michelle Kuffo shares, “Storms and flooding affect where I live since I live so close to the water. Our street floods. I have a basement so water would cause flooding and house damage.” Flooding in basements has been a common issue with some residents in Seaford, and no matter what they try to do to prevent their basements from getting flooded, there will always be a chance that water will end up there no matter what.
Once the storm clears and the water has gone down, the residents and the town take action to prepare to fix any damage that was caused by the storms and floods. Michelle Kuffo shares, “If there are any issues, we contact the representative from our town. Roads were pitched away from the houses. New curbs were installed.” While some of these issues are fixed by the residents cleaning, rebuilding, and having the town come to fix some of the damages as well, there are cases where the damage hasn’t been fixed, a lot of complicated issues come to raise, or some promised actions would help to fix and solve these fixes haven’t come into full even years later. Sal Maffettone states, “the town has sent out numerous engineers to see if they can widen or expand the stream, but nothing has been done till this day. It has been 14 years.” The stream that resides our house still affects us, and the town was supposed to do something about it, however after many years and multitude of floods by different storms and even hurricane Sandy, the town still hasn’t down a thing to fix the stream by either expanding it or blocking the stream. There are even small traps that were placed there to prevent animals or trap animals in them but are now seen as a caution for people who try to go near it and is seen as another issue with it as well. Finally, Joe Sanflippo stated, “After super storm Sandy hit, the town of Hempstead has improved our drainage systems, which has helped tremendously. As a homeowner, we try and make sure our home is free of crakes and we pay close attention to the weather during those hurricane months to ensure we can prep our home accordingly. We also carry flood insurance incase a storm is so bad we need assistance in making repairs to our home.” The best part of having the drainage system is that they help with drain the water as quickly as possible but the only issue that comes with them is that if you live near a stream like I do, there a chance the drainage system won’t work as quick as it should be and there comes the chance that things like trash and leaves can cause the drainage system to clog and block the water from being removed from the streets causing flooding to happen more quickly.
Seaford’s flooding problems continue to happen today but rarely are cases where flooding gets bad to the point where the town gets involved with fixing such things as the drainage system or even blocking or expanding streams. But a new problem that has been happening with the most recent of floods has to be involved with reckless driving whenever a flood is taking place. Last year, the stream got so bad the street was fully covered in water and because there were drivers who wanted to get through, they would drive fast enough that it would spread the water towards my house and the neighbors house, cause the water to reach areas it shouldn’t and causing basement flooding to happen more likely and worse than any other type of flood. There would even be cars that would die and be stuck in the water and cars would still drive through, cause either car damage or more flooding to our houses to the point we had to block the roads to prevent more cars from coming till the police arrived. Seaford deals with a lot around the hurricane season and whenever flooding happens, it will always affect the town in some way shape or form. As long as there are solutions to fixing these issues, then we can hope for the best that Seaford will find easier ways to deal with floods in the future.