Queens councilmember Phil Wong called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to redirect city funding toward strengthening flood-resilient infrastructure after Queens residents struggled with bouts of storms over the last month.
According to the letter sent Sunday, Wong called on the city to clean catch basins on a regular schedule instead of just after a storm, install more catch basins in flood-prone areas that can handle larger volumes of water, and install more “retention tanks” that store water underground after heavy rain.
“New York City needs a long-term investment in sewer capacity on a scale we have never seen before,” Wong said in the letter. “The storms we are experiencing today are not the storms this sewer system was designed to handle. We know that. The administration knows that. Continuing to respond to each flood as though it were an unexpected emergency is no longer acceptable.”
In the last month, heavy storms inundated the city on at least four occasions, including as recently as Sunday morning. In Queens, several neighborhoods are vulnerable to heavy rain — a storm last week left cars and homes submerged and trees downed, according to videos posted on social media.
Wong represents the district that includes Maspeth, Elmhurst, Rego Park and other neighborhoods in Central Queens. He criticized the Mamdani administration for its city budget priorities, spending millions on new offices rather than on what Wong described as critical infrastructure upgrades for his constituents.
“They want their streets to drain. They want their homes protected. They want a real plan, and they want to know that City Hall is making basic infrastructure a priority,” the letter said.
In the latest city budget, the Mamdani administration invested $43.2 million to expand the city’s “coastal resiliency bureau” under the Department of Environmental Protection, with the goal of hiring dozens more maintenance workers, inspectors, and engineers. The bureau will work on long-term planning to protect the city’s coastline from rising sea levels and flooding caused by climate change.
In a statement to Gothamist, the DEP said its capital plan dedicates about $1 billion a year over the next decade to stormwater management projects and mitigation solutions.
Its mitigation approach combines sewer upgrades with underground stormwater storage, rain gardens, and bluebelts that capture and retain rainwater before it enters the sewer system.
City Hall said it’s pursuing both short- and long-term fixes to repeated flooding, including upgraded catch basins, permeable pavement, floodable parks and billions of dollars in new stormwater and sewer infrastructure.
This story has been updated with new information.
