Politics & Government

Bruce Terrace Drainage Project Underway in Mineola

Several new catch basins already operational in residential areas.

Mineola residents living in the area of Bruce Terrace have had a flurry of construction along their streets relating to the start of the flood mitigation project designed being undertaken between the Village of Mineola, the Town of North Hempstead and Nassau County. When completed, the project will provide drainage relief to the areas of East Second Street and Bruce Terrace.

For the village’s third of the project, phase one of the Bruce Terrace drainage improvements involved installing two new catch basins, two new manholes and 300 ft. of storm water drainage pipe and connecting it into the existing drainage system.

“It is operational at this time,” village superintendent of public works Tom Rini said during the March 6 meeting of the village board at village hall, noting that the trench area for the installation of the pipe has been paved with base pavement and saw cut. “The area is safe at this time.”

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Towards the end of the project, when each of the phases has been completed, the contractor will return and mill the area and pave it as well.

Phase two of the village’s portion of the project is the Dow Avenue drainage interceptor and no work has begun on this part as of yet.

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“We’re pending the start of Nassau County’s Sheridan Boulevard interceptor project,” Rini said. “I know it was put out to bid, there is an apparent low bidder to my knowledge but nothing’s been awarded as yet.”

Rini said that he knows who the low bidder is and has placed a call to that company for more information and the village’s engineers have also reached out to the county.

“We did bypass that portion of the project at this time because we would have no place to connect our pipe to,” he said. “So we basically installed pipe and have to end up bulk heading it so we prefer to wait until the county gets started with that so we know that both pipes will meet at the proper elevation.”

Due to the number of utility lines such as gas mains, water pipes and sewer pipes, Rini noted that “it’s going to be a bit of a tricky installation over there.”

Phase three deals with the construction of the Liberty Avenue stormwater drain. Thus far the village has installed 195 ft. of 24-inch drainage pipe and a connecting manhole was installed from the recharge basin in a southerly direction through ball field No. 2 to the dead end of Liberty Avenue, where a connecting manhole was installed on March 6.

“They did start backfilling that and with anticipation of weather, we did stop there,” Rini said, adding that crews did put a saw-cut down Liberty Avenue in order to begin excavation work. The next part will involve the installation of 1,030 ft. of 24-inch drainage pipe from the dead-end of Liberty Avenue near ball field No. 3 to the intersection of Union Street as well as the installation of four catch basins.

One new catch basin will be on Senate just off of Liberty Avenue, one on the north side of Liberty just east of Union and two catch basins on Union Street just south of Liberty Avenue.

“All that is to catch the water from that drainage area transported down to Liberty Avenue pipe and dump it into the recharge basin before it gets to East Second Street,” he said, adding that nothing would be running under field No. 2 “and realistically it’s running along the east side of the pool between what is the goalposts and the pool fence.”

“The point was, considering Nassau County’s not ready to go and we’re right on top of our spring season, get that pipe in as fast as I can so I can at least get it backfilled,” Rini said, noting that the trench would require a 12-14 ft. excavation in the area. “It doesn’t necessarily affect the field, there’s going to be some cleanup, but that field will be usable; so this way we won’t have any issues with having cancellations or things like that. We’re right up against it but we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that the ball field can be used.”

Phase four involves the construction of the recharge basin.

“No work per se has been done there,” Rini reported, saying that 12,000 cubic yards of soil was excavated from the Carle Place recharge basin was transported and “set out throughout our recharge basin that will be used to construct the new recharge basin walls.”

The excavated material will also be used on the Carle Place side.

“Things are moving along, people are seeing things happen; it’s moving along pretty nicely given some of the things we’ve had to encounter,” Rini said.

When asked by Trustee Lawrence Werther if any homeless persons were displaced by the construction, Rini stated that to his knowledge there were no such persons living in the area.

“There’s never been anyone that I’ve been aware of north of Westbury Avenue in that motor parkway property,” Rini said.

Several years ago the village did have some issues between the old motor parkway and the Waldbaums grocery store on the south side of Westbury Avenue and chose to raising up trees and bushes, thus displacing some transients in that area.

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