County teams up with NY-Alert

Legislators frustrated at slow pace of flood studies

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — If you’re looking for advanced warning about future flooding events or other disasters, you may soon be able to have alerts sent directly to your fax, email and home or cell phones.

Sullivan County Public Safety Commissioner Dick Martinkovic told lawmakers on March 6 that county officials are developing a system whereby warnings about impending disasters, as well as information about other matters such as road closures, will be available through the state-wide newly- created NY-Alert program.

The service is already up and running in some parts of the state, and in some state institutions, such as the 22 schools of the City University of New York.

To use the service, a resident registers at the website, www.nyalert.gov. The user next selects the possible emergencies he or she would like to be alerted to, such as biological, chemical, environmental, fire, geophysical, infrastructure, law, medical, nuclear, public health, safety and security. The user then has a choice of being alerted to only extreme events, minor ones or levels of severity in between.

The user then chooses where the alerts will be sent, and the method, be it text or voice.

Martinkovic is in the process of obtaining authorization to use the system, and after that, other officials, such as the county manager and the sheriff, will be authorized to use it. Once in place, officials may be able to alert specific communities to local situations. For instance, if there were an overturned truck in Narrowsburg, an alert might be sent only to phone numbers with the 252 prefix, or NY-Alert users who live in the 12764 zip code.

Officials in Delaware County last year had purchased a reverse 911 system, which essentially provides the same service, but that county paid $30,000 for the program, which came with a yearly $10,000 maintanence cost. Martinkovic said the NY-Alert system would be essentially free to all counties, including Sullivan.

At the same public safety meeting, which came in the aftermath of minor flooding in several county waterways the day before, lawmakers expressed frustration at the slow pace of progress in beginning the federal studies of the waters in the county, which have seen repeated flooding since 2004.

Legislator Woody Wood, who represents flood-prone Livingston Manor and Roscoe, warned that heavy rain events were likely to come again. He said, “Let’s get these studies done.”

At the meeting, Martinkovic noted that governor Eliot Spitzer had promised to provide $650,000 for flood mitigation projects in the state. The funds, however, will be divided among many competing flood-prone communities, and the amount was seen as fairly meager.

When an announcement about the funds was made at a “flood summit” in Binghamton on February 28, senator John Bonacic issued a statement saying, “We need a substantial state investment in flood prevention. This funding is a good first step, but we will need a continuous investment in order to provide a permanent solution to prevent flood damage.”