{"id":328343,"date":"2026-08-24T13:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328343\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:06:07","slug":"queens-council-member-demands-the-city-invest-more-on-flood-prevention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328343\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens council member demands the city invest more on flood prevention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-block-key=\"kcqvf\">Queens council member Phil Wong called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to redirect city funding towards strengthening flood resiliency infrastructure after Queens residents struggled with bouts of storms in the last month.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"2tvs5\">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 more \u201cretention tanks\u201d which store water underground after heavy rain.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"abm7q\">\u201cNew York City needs a long-term investment in sewer capacity on a scale we have never seen before,\u201d Wong said in the letter. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"frsj9\">In the last month, heavy storms inundated the city on at least four occasions including as recently as Sunday morning. In Queens, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/content\/climate\/pages\/coastal-surge-flooding\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">several neighborhoods are vulnerable<\/a> to heavy rain \u2014 a storm last week left cars and homes sunken in water and downed trees, according to videos posted on social media.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"3ormo\">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 funding priorities by spending millions on new offices over what Wong described as critical infrastructure upgrades for his constituents.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"af10p\">\u201cThey 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,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"9kbpp\">In the latest city budget, the Mamdani administration invested $43.2 million to expand the city\u2019s \u201ccoastal resiliency bureau\u201d under the Department of Environmental Protection, with the goal to hire dozens of more maintenance workers, inspectors and engineers. The bureau will work towards long-term planning to protect the city\u2019s coastline from rising sea levels and flooding due to climate change.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"filnj\">The DEP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens council member Phil Wong called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to redirect city funding towards strengthening flood resiliency&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-328343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}