Private streets may be taken over by city

From Brooklyn Daily:

The city is taking a crucial step towards taking over responsibility for hundreds of unmapped streets — the private byways in many neighborhoods which homeowners are now burdened with maintaining.

Mayor DeBlasio has signed a new law requiring the Department of Transportation to identify and study all of the city’s unmapped streets with the aim of the city acquiring them in order to bring them into the normal system of municipal maintenance.

Councilman Alan Maisel (D–Canarsie) introduced the legislation because maintenance has become too burdensome for many of his constituents who live on such streets, he said.

Under the new law, the Department of Transportation must identify and study all unmapped streets citywide by June 30, 2018, to determine the feasibility of bringing them onto the city rolls, Maisel said.

But the process of adding a street to the city map isn’t always as straightforward as one might think. In many cases, it’s not clear which streets — or even which parts of a street — are outside the city’s purview. Hence the need for the study, Maisel said.

“What is and what isn’t, we don’t know, there are lots of them, every street has a different history and we want to know,” he said. “There’s a lot of confusion, and it requires a lot of research.”

Broad Channel residents fined due to DEP incompetence

From the Queens Chronicle:

It’s a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.

Residents living on Larnark Road, an isolated dead-end street that sticks out into Jamaica Bay on the east side of Broad Channel, have no sewer connection. When their homes were built more than half a century ago, their sewage just drained into the bay.

But 30 years ago, the city Department of Environmental Protection promised to connect their sewers to the city’s system to prevent sewage from seeping into the bay, which had been classified a federally protected habitat. They’re still waiting.

Patience wore thin and was completely sapped when $30,000 fines were issued to the residents of Larnark Road and nearby Church Road by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. They had ruled it was the residents’ fault their sewer system was not legal.

Angry and despondent residents went to Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Far Rockaway), who called in city and state officials to his office for a meeting on Oct. 10.

Residents and other local officials wanted the city to take responsibility for the fines because it had reneged on its agreement to build new sewers. The DEP said it never went through with the sewer project because the Department of Transportation ruled Larnark Road was a private road since it was not on a map, which would mean the city was not responsible for the sewers on the street, the residents would be. The state, believing the DOT’s assertion that Larnark Road was a private road, fined the residents.

“The city does not do sewer projects on private roads,” Goldfeder said.

But Larnark Road residents argued they do not live on a private road. The street, which extends from Noel Road near the neighborhood’s subway station to about 300 feet into Jamaica Bay, is clearly a city road, they say. Local officials agree.

“It’s clear that this is the city’s responsibility, and they need to acknowledge it and move on to design and construction,” said Jonathan Gaska, district manager of Community Board 14, which includes Broad Channel.