Fix the Infrastructure

Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:41 AM EDT

A television commercial once admonished us that “It is not nice to FOOL MOTHER NATURE!” Well Mother Nature can sure fool Queens and the rest of the city by merely dumping three inches of rain on us.

Moreover, when she throws in some wind or an occasional tornado to knock down trees, rip off roofs and down the power lines, she can bring the Big Apple to its knees.

We were nonplussed when a spokesperson for the MTA advised workers to stay at home an extra hour or more on Tuesday, August 7 because the transit system could not handle them at that time.

That was unbelievable - stay home because rain has flooded the roads, drowned the subway lines and crippled the commuter railroads. We are sure employers all over the city were thrilled with that MTA advisory.

The roads always flood in the usual spots due to poor design and faulty or inadequate drainage. We have long ago learned our “high road” ways to drive around Queens.

Homeowners have gotten used to flooded basements whenever we get a heavy rain. They quickly operate the mops and wet vacs and cleanup after Mother Nature.

We know that the cleaning schedule - once every three years - of catch basins as well as a sewer system without sufficient capacity are to blame for some of this residential flooding. The rest of the fault is due to building oversights, existing water table levels, the concreting of our lawns and green spaces creating more rain runoff and simply - location, location, location.

Our mayor wants to drive us out of our cars and onto the mass transit system by the thousands to clear the air in Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg needs to forget about congestion pricing and put his resources and attention into fixing the transit system, enlarging the capacity of our ancient sewer system, draining the flooded roads, pumping out the railroad tracks and subways, adding cell phone service to subway platforms and inspecting our bridges so that we do not suffer a tragedy like the one recently in Minnesota.

We are told by the MTA and the city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that the subways will drown repeatedly unless we pump billions of dollars to improve the city’s sewer and transit systems’ pumps. Assessors concede there is simply no place for the water to go once the sewers are full.

We are living in a city that has over $9 billion in budget surplus. Maybe we should pump some of these surplus tax dollars to increasing the volume of water our sewers can handle - and in a hurry - it is hurricane season.

We need our elected officials to stop the finger pointing and act promptly to modernize the entire infrastructure.