QMC: When Rain Is a "Rain Event," Your School Will Get Soaked

BRONXVILLE, NY — 04 October 2018

Yesterday's "From the Mayor" column — as published automatically and without examination in various area "newspapers" — offers the most "press" coverage Village of Bronxville has of a recent "news event," as we might call it, employing the add-redundant-words mayoral vernacular favored by Mary Marvin. A "news event," therefore, is bigger news than news. Just as a "rain event" is no mere downpour, but an occasion for VOB to contemplate why its Main Street is named Pondfield.

Getting your news mainly from your mayor is a problem only if you think of it as news. I think it's both, and even more so now that I am no longer Bronxville-Eastchester's Patch Mayor (nor are there any signs of my replacement). So our QMC column — Quizzing Mary's Claims — continues, as it must, serving the vital public interest of, for one thing, helping readers navigate the murky waters below.

Her Honor's October 3 column is presented by Mary as a series of answers to allegedly real questions (in boldface) from actual residents, specific to the "rain event" which flooded the School — despite The Pumps — on September 25.

Did Mayor Marvin answer the questions? In her way. By which I mean of course not.

Did Mary succeed, at least, in reassuring us that Village Hall, and Her Honor's counterparts at the Bronxville School, know exactly what they are doing? Ditto.

It is generally to be avoided, reproducing "From the Mayor" in full, but QMC doesn't have the option this week in the face of a news event about a rain event. Waders on? Over to Mayor Marvin:

"Oct. 3, 2018: Last Tuesday, we had the third major rain event in as many weeks and clearly the most damaging, affecting every corner of the village including homes never before flooded. As a result, many questions were directed to school and village officials as to the whys and wherefores. The following are responses to the questions for which we could garner immediate answers after consultation with the project engineers and pump manufacturers. Many other issues we continue to research and will answer in follow-up columns. Please send any additional questions to my email at Mayor@vobny.com. Responses are in narrative form, but if you wish to see the background data that predicated the answers, you are welcome to come and review at village hall." [sic]

Last thing first: It is the absolute & adamantine law of Village Hall that you must fill out a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) form to "see the background data" — or any VOB information not already there at the counter of the main office.

Then you will have to wait for the approval of Jim Palmer, Village Administrator. If your FOIL "request" — for information you already own, bought and paid for outright with your taxes — is too broad, it will be rejected. "I want to see the background data on why Bronxville keeps flooding," for example, is a classic example of a too-broad FOIL "request."

The ultimate arbiter of what you get to see of your own data, Bronxville, is Larchmont resident James Staudt. As Village Attorney, he is our employee. Mr Staudt writes Village Code, the same laws that say Mr Staudt may, for example, refuse your examination of his firm's billings of VOB — which are substantial.

There is no appeal beyond Jim Staudt — only a lawsuit, generative of more of his fees — if you want to, for example, take up Mary, fully, on her offer "to see the background data that predicated the answers." Because you will never be permitted to see all of it. So you may as well wait for "follow-up columns" (when?) by Mayor Marvin "as to the whys and wherefores" of Bronxville's chronic flooding, right?

Nonsense. You own the data. Demand it.

Luckily, a key document is — or was, when I examined it last week — on the side table in the main office. I am describing the 2007 "Midland/Pondfield Area Stormwater Flooding Report" prepared by J. Robert Folchetti & Associates, "civil/environmental engineers," now based in Brewster, NY. This is where it began — the decision to go with The Pumps. In it you will find vivid illustrations of the problem that has plagued Bronxville Village from that fateful day (in 1923) we concluded we could drain a pond, and just have the field:

But this column is about Mary Marvin's column — not about a "freedom of information" law, designed to speed information to its owners (the public), but which barely elected officials (in VOB's case) and their crony attorneys use to do just the opposite: FOIL, in NYS (and everywhere else), is the means by which governments lock up every scrap of taxpayer-owned data, and keep it that way. If only Freedom of Information Law could shut off climate change as effectively as it quashes civil inquiry into the obvious blunders & wrongdoings of a government.

The failure of FOIL, and of FOIA more generally, touches all aspects of our lives. This failure has a place in every news story, even in one about a regularly soaked school that was deliberately constructed in a flood zone — a decision made by grownups who all insisted at the time they knew exactly what they were doing and all for the best.

So let's soldier on and continue with what little we've got "From the Mayor" {while interrupting constantly with curly-bracketed questions}:

"Background - Midland Valley Drainage Basin
"In 2007, after $22 million in damages to school property and the loss of multiple weeks of school and significant damage to village residences {what was total VOB loss in '07?}, school and village officials began exploring grant opportunities to avoid such catastrophic flood damage to our village going forward. {What were they? Are there unexplored "grant opportunities" since '07?}

"After years of applications {to where? why rejected?} and cost-benefit analyses {of what?}, we received a FEMA grant of $5,770,000. {Was it a "grant"? Or was it an aspect of FEMA's administration of the National Flood Insurance Program? Or something else?} However, the funds came our way only after {why?} another storm in 2011 that caused an additional $6 million in damages to the school alone. {Total 2011 damage? Who paid?} The school district could not be the grantee or lead agency of the FEMA grant by law {why?}, so village government led the project.

"A multiyear plan was designed and fully vetted by FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Westchester County {who/where/what, specifically?}, and two regional engineering firms {their names?}. A five-pump system was designed for the rainfall and river flow distribution based on the 2007 storm event of 7.52 inches in a 24-hour period — the equivalent of a 50-year-magnitude storm. {So are you saying The Pumps were settled on in '07 with no subsequent reference to the 2011 flood?}

"The village and school partnered to absorb the cost {how much?} of two pumps and a new stormwater force main, with the school going out to a required bond vote {please explain why} for the additional pumps and corresponding increased level of mitigation."

{So are you saying, Mayor, that the only reason we have two of five pumps is because we paid out of pocket for them? In a 21 September interview with Bronxville Patch, Bronxville School Assistant Superintendent of Business Dan Carlin told me the School is haggling with Rain for Rent, the manufacturers of The Pumps, over price. Is this why the School flooded on the 25th?}

Continuing with "From the Mayor":

"Did the pumps work? {how many residents actually asked this question, given the clear evidence of flooding?}
"School and village officials met post-storm with the pump manufacturer and project engineer at the pump site to determine their efficacy. There was indeed a problem on pump one with the automatic nature of the trigger switch and float sensor. It is being remedied with new and redundant mechanisms. Thankfully, Mike Lee, the Bronxville School’s director of facilities, received the alarm, was on site, and started the pump manually, causing no delays. Even if pump one had failed to activate, pump two would have engaged automatically."

{So did Pump #1 fail twice? Because Mike Lee described this same scenario to Bronxville Patch four days prior to the 9/25 flood. Or are you, Mayor Marvin, conflating two incidents? — one of which was a non-story (on 9/21), but containing the sort of detail that becomes the larger narrative if poorly reported.

By the way, Your Honor, the official response to "Did the pumps work?" — as penned by the School — goes basically like this: "The Pumps will work (when we have all five of them) unless the 'rain event' exceeds what we've dealt with previously." Which, turns out, it just did — in volume, if not duration — as Mayor Marvin is about to reveal. Back to Her Honor.}

"Were the pumps worth it? {worth what? what residents were taxed? which was how much, all-in?}
Given $30 million in damage {all-in, in total? because you said $28m above}, five feet peak water levels in our school in both the 2007 and 2011 events, and multiple weeks of lost instruction, the pumps clearly meet the cost-benefit test {where is this test so we can run the numbers ourselves?} based on just the past three storms in September when they activated.

{Do you mean prior to the fourth — and flooding — storm? Yes, I think you do:} "During this past Tuesday’s event, the pumps ran four hours straight as the flow of water in our Midland basin pipes exceeded the level of both the 2007 and 2011 storms."

{Bronxville School's Dan Carlin advised Bronxville Patch readers on 9/21 to lower their expectations: "That thirty inches of rain in the Carolinas" — we were speaking in the horror-aftermath of Hurricane Florence — "I don't know if we could pump that out in time, even with all five [pumps] running."}

"What will the additional pumps accomplish?
"There were periods during the storm event on 9/25 when the water was rising in the pump station chamber with both pumps running. This indicated that stormwater runoff was entering the system at a rate greater than the available pumping capacity, resulting in excess runoff in parking lots, etc. In essence, two pumps mitigated a great deal of damage {how much?}, but more were needed. Additional pumps will provide further flood mitigation for storms similar to 9/25, as well as larger-magnitude storm events that result in even higher river flows and longer periods of rainfall, resulting in potentially greater damage to school property.

{Your Honor is perhaps unwisely monkeying with Jim Staudt's legalese here. "Further flood mitigation" is just an obscurantist way of saying "still flooding, less severe." But since you bring it up, Mayor Marvin — "larger-magnitude storm events" — we really do need you to define for us what you mean by "mitigation." If 9/25 could have been "further mitigated" by all five pumps, had there been the five and not the two, does "mitigation" in this instance mean a dry and open School on 9/26? (School reopened on 9/27.) What are the insurance claims on 9/25?

Because if "larger-magnitude storm events" will result in the now-familiar site of a pond reclaiming all of its parking spaces at the elementary school, to what extent do we wish to continue to trade with one another, as neighbors and citizens, in words like "mitigation"? Or of its being "furthered?

Dan Carlin and Mike Lee of the Bronxville School — the two people directly responsible for the acquisition and operation of The Pumps — are in the business, see above, of discouraging our expectations of "mitigation" during "larger-magnitude storm events."

Is now the time to go back to what survives of the historical record and find out how The Pumps — which are no beauties, and the situation in that cage on Midland is about to get 3x uglier — were sold to Bronxville by Bronxville as The Solution? Absolutely. It's for times like this that Bronxville Patch is a newspaper, right? Uncompromising of basic journalistic standards, putting first the public's right to know — unmitigated by lawyerisms.}

"What kind of storm was this past one? 25-year? 50-year?
"Data from the National Weather Service gaging systems that are used to analyze rainfall in the Bronx River Watershed are not yet available for the 9/25 event. {And good luck, yourself, negotiating with yet another Rube Goldberg government website.} As far as intensity, we do know that the maximum hourly rate change of rainfall was almost 100% higher during the 9/25 storm vs the 2007 Nor’easter, which was the impetus for the [pumping] system. The 9/25 maximum hourly and two hourly rate change of rainfall was even more than 100% greater than the 2011 storm. The damage from last week’s storm was from the intensity, not the duration."

"Why did Meadow Avenue flood with two pumps working?
"The two pumps were clearly at capacity during the rain event, and we have requested that the mitigation effects of a third and fourth pump be analyzed by the project engineers with focus on Meadow Avenue. {Wait a minute! Why? What new information did 9/25 provide? We've already signed-on for five pumps, right? Dan Carlin and Mike Lee told Bronxville Patch the final three would be installed in November.}

"In the interim, we are re-clearing the drains on Meadow Avenue as well as all the drains in the Midland Valley Drainage Basin. {At what cost? And what about all the CIPP infrastructure, with its toxic emissions and high failure rate?} In the coming months, we will clean all 400 drainage basins throughout the village. {At what cost? How budgeted?} Lawn and tree debris, road gravel runoff, and roof leaders emptying into the storm sewers are our constant clogging culprits. {Who is "our"? What can and should home and business owners do to help?}

"We are also reviewing the size of the conveyance pipe on Meadow Avenue with the thought that the capacity may need to be increased and/or dry wells/retention tanks added in that area as well. {Wait. Why? Was "The Pumps" project compromised from the start? Was something more reliable — but pricier — suggested at the time? What will all of this new infrastructure cost? When will it end, the need for "increased" and "added"? Was "The Pumps" the wrong decision from the very start?}

Continuing with "From the Mayor":

"Did areas near Park Avenue/Sycamore Street flood more because of the pumping system? The artificial field? The removal of trees?
"Water from these neighborhoods is collected into the Midland Basin storm conveyance pipes, which are 36" and 72" in size. The pumping system actually helped move the water downhill to the storage chambers below Hayes Field and then removed uphill via a force main to the Bronx River at the outlet at the intersection of Palumbo Place and Gramatan Avenue, where it was discharged. The system, as designed, 'operates as a closed system with no release of collected runoff into adjacent soils and no groundwater entering the system.'" {Quoting someone. Someone making an extraordinary — and therefore all the more dubious — claim about the perfect functioning of overtaxed machinery. Who is speaking, please? And when?}

"In short, the new force main took water from the existing 36- and 72-inch pipes (via the pump), allowing them to capture additional runoff. As to the permeability of Hayes Field, the school district is reaching out to the turf field designers for absorption data. {Allow me to rephrase the question: Like the car floor liners you install because car floors must be carpeted, does the former field of Pondfield — it is now mostly so-called turf — cause rainwater to sheet towards the school, as when the car floor liner buckles and snags on something and dumps all that filthy meltwater onto your car's carpeted floor, anyway?}

"Ten trees along Midland Avenue were removed for the pumping station but were replaced by 20 new ones as well as additional landscaping." {Did those ten trees afford any natural flood mitigation? If they did, is that mitigation doubled? When?}

"Why did water cause damage by seeping up through basements?
"Given the rain levels of this summer followed by three major storm events in three weeks in September, the absorption rate of the soil was compromised. (The county sent us numerous advisories during even small wind events because of the fear of trees toppling in the saturated soil.)

{Did Village Administrator Jim Palmer ever — even once — pass these "numerous advisories" on to Village residents via the Bronxville eAlert Service? [Warning: VOB's website is HTTP NOT SECURE. Clicking on that or any link to villageofbronxvilledotcom could infect your own computer.] If Mr Palmer did not pass along these scary-sounding "advisories," why on earth did he not?}

"When I spoke with my colleagues in Tuckahoe and Eastchester, they relayed incidents of residents' basements filling with water in some of their highest elevation neighborhoods — a never-before occurrence."

And so "From the Mayor" for 3 October 2018 ends with that classic Mary Marvin chestnut: Things may be not so great in Bronxville this week — but it's always worse elsewhere!