Here & There Column 10-2-12

Flood Protection Needed For Manor

  Time and time again the hamlet of Livingston Manor gets pounded when we get torrential rains that turn into flooded streams.

  Merchants and home owners are forced to pump water out of flooded basements and business owners shovel silt and mud off their sidewalks. Homes and household items are damaged or destroyed  and people live in fear knowing what the flooded streams can do and have done in the past.  

  Main street merchants and business establishments comment freely that they have been through this type of flooding many times but that nothing is ever done to reduce or eliminate the flooding. 

  Most of the damage this time was concentrated along Shandelee Road and Main Street.

  The Manor flooding crisis always gets studies and more studies that costs everyone money but nothing ever gets done.

  The Cattail Creek just couldn't handle the heavy rains and this stream is said to have a very limited creek bed.....but time and time again this scenio takes place in Livingston Manor.

  The Army Corps of Engineers continue studies of the flooding but the study is said to be concentrated on the Little Beaverkill and Willowemoc streams and does not include the Cattail Creek. 

  These studies give some directions but nothing's been done to this date and the only firm facts are that the further studies could take a couple of years to complete.

  Livingston Manor has a confluence of three streams entering into this hamlet and there is much damage on these streams banks which allows flooding to easily take place.

  We've said it several times ago and we'll say it again .... serious work must be done on  these streams and the folks in the Manor have just about had it with these so called  "studies".