Army Corps Details Hempstead Lake Plan

The Army Corps of Engineers has released detailed plans of the changes it's going to make to Mill River and Hempstead State Park as part of Rebuild by Design's Living with the Bays project. The work will help improve the flow of water in Mill River and in Hempstead Lake so that they can more adequately deal with storm surge when major flooding hits.

Rebuild by Design was born in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which hit Long Island seven years ago. The federal government didn't want communities to just rebuild as they were, since the infrastructure obviously couldn't handle the flooding. So the government created Rebuild by Design: a contest held by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to find the most innovative and effective design solutions to protect coastal areas from the next Hurricane Sandy.

One of the winners was the Interboro Team, a collaboration between Dutch and American designers, to make Long Island's South Shore more resilient. Their plan focused on Mill River, which starts in Hempstead Lake State Park in Rockville Centre and runs through Lynbrook, East Rockaway, Oceanside and Bay Park before emptying into Reynolds Channel. During Sandy, the river swelled and flooded homes up and down its bank. The Interboro plan, called "Living with the Bays," would make the river more resilient and less likely to flood, and would incorporate design ideas that could be replicated near bodies of water all over Long Island.

The plan the Army Corps of Engineers put out is the first concrete steps that are being taken for the project. According to the Army Corps, the work includes lake and stream bank stabilization, the construction of two new stormwater detention basins, replacing existing stormwater culverts, installing new stormwater culverts, wetland channel excavation to improve water circulation and the replacement of an exiting low-level dam which was damaged during Hurricane Sandy. A stormwater culvert is a structure that allows stormwater under a road.

The Army Corps says that the plan will remove about 2.36 acres of wetland in total, but will make the remaining wetlands more viable. By improving the dam and the wetlands in the area, the project will increase the capacity of the lakes and ponds along Mill River, which will mean less flooding during storms.

According to the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery, which is overseeing the Living with the Bays project, construction is currently scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020.

You can read detailed notes about the Army Corps' plan by clicking here.