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Health & Fitness

Flash Floods again

Is again issued for our area….and I wonder if Nyack is ready once again for the torrents of rain coming down Main Street. I’ve been around the village now for just short of 7 decades and I can attest flooding on Main Street is not new news!  Allow me to take a look back at the water problems over the years. Water coming down the Nyack brook has been a problem since the early days of the settlement.

In the early 1800’s a lumber mill was constructed on Main Street just about opposite where Mill Street is today. (Hence the name.)  The mill was in use till about 1890 when the property was sold and the Pavilion Hotel was built on the hill to the north side of Main.  Actually, the eastern portion of Catherine Street was the original driveway up the hotel. There were grand vistas from the front porch overlooking the Hudson River.  Also about this time land and business owners west of Franklin Street started to cover the Nyack Brook with wooden planks placed across the little brook, and build over them.  Storms of the day did flood the village. After a long spring dry spell in 1903 a heavy rain in October caused a ten foot rise of the brook in a single day. The steamboat Chrystenah was unable to dock at the foot of Main as the pier’s pilings were covered with water.

I have attached a copy of the 1909 Sanborn Insurance Map for the center of Nyack (available at Nyack Library.) Nyack Brook is still uncovered. You can also see the electric generating plant of the Nyack Electric Company using the water from the brook to cool their coal fired generators. Down on Broadway the bridge over the Nyack Brook was removed south of Hudson Ave, and the stream placed in a brick culvert (it was just recently repaired) and the commercial buildings along Broadway were constructed.

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Not much changed for the Nyack Brook until President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) came to Nyack in the 1930’s. Engineers and workers improved the old plank coverings and also built walls along the Nyack Brook and covered a great deal of the stream through the center of the village. (The power plant moved by then to the Orangeburg Pipe factory)  The brook was not only used during this time for the water run-off and drainage, but also as the main sewer line through the heart of the area.  Records of flooding began in the late 1930’s. Despite WPA efforts Nyack Brook would often flood the stores along Main Street.  At the old Police Station on Main cops in rubber boots had to sweep water out of the Village Hall.

In July 1948 the Nyack Brook went on one of its worst rampages. The Nyack Evening Journal quoted a local long-time resident “This is the worst flooding of the brook in 42 years.”  Hurricane Edna’s winds and high waters destroyed the Nyack Rowing Club’s home in September 1954 and caused major flooding along Main Street. Hurricane Hazel followed a month later once again causing tremendous flooding from the Nyack Brook partly because it was clogged with railroad ties, logs, sheet metal and debris lodged under Baron’s Furniture Store on Upper Main. Hurricane Donna in August 1960 brought some of the heaviest rains in more than 30 years causing the level of the Nyack Brook to rise 9 feet and overflow into the stores and houses along its course. .

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One of the biggest changes to the Nyack Brook occurred during the Urban Renewal Program in the late 1960’s.  As you can see from the Sanborn Map the street ran just about through the middle of the program area.  Engineers and the developers decided to move the brook to the west end of the area along Franklin Street. A huge concrete culvert (my memory tells me it was about 8 foot square) was constructed from Main Street directly south along Franklin down and under Depew Ave. The Nyack Brook was diverted and it course along Main Street was changed at the intersection of Main and Franklin.  A curve in the brook’s course was built and channeled in the new culvert.  (It runs under the bank’s drive in on the corner.)  This change really didn’t help much. Hurricane Agnes in 1972 played havoc with the brook, and in 1979 Storm David again brought severe flooding to Main Street.

 If you noted where the most recent flood occurred from the drainage catch basins just north of Main along Franklin you can pretty much tell where the Nyack Brook was turned to the south and into the culvert.   I can only wonder if the curve in the brook is not once again clogged with debris causing the overflow back into the street drainage. Perhaps it needs to be once again cleaned out? 

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