Local lawmakers announce new legislation tackling flooding in Upstate NY

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Sen. John Mannion and Assemblymember Al Stirpe Monday announced new legislation to mitigate persistent flooding in Central New York and the Mohawk Valley.

They are proposing the creation of a centralized Oswego River Basin Authority to improve water and discharge management.

The Oswego River Basin is an expansive 5,122-square-mile geologic trough that receives the combined flows from seven of New York’s eleven Finger Lakes and therefore experiences regular flooding, particularly in the basin’s relatively flat northernmost section.

The Task Force report found that annually, flooding in the Oswego River Basin accounts for $13,644,000 in losses to structures and $660,000 in losses to agricultural lands. Additionally, over the past five years flooding in the Oswego River Basin has caused $16 million in damages to recreational assets like boat launches and docks.

Mannion and Stirpe are calling for a complete mapping of the Oswego River Watershed using the Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System (HEC-RAS,) which is the technique and methodology endorsed by the Task Force and what’s used by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The legislation also adopts recommendations from the recent report issued by the Upstate Flood Mitigation Task Force, a panel of hydrologists, emergency management experts, and other stakeholders whose work was enabled by earlier legislation sponsored by Mannion and Stirpe and signed by the governor."The bottom line is that the weather has changed. The rain events have changed. And we need infrastructure that can handle these types of events,” Stirpe said.