Jefferson Village Fights with Town over Storm Run-Off

Like the streets around it, Yorktown's Fairview Avenue is a quiet road, sloping through a residential neighborhood just above Jefferson Village.

When rain falls, as it did the other day, it runs downhill, gathering speed and the collected detritus of the road. Silt, pesticides, road-kill remains—anything in the way—form a stream ultimately swallowed by a storm drain at the foot of Fairview, to be seen nevermore.

"Nevermore," however, can be found just beyond a cul de sac.

Push past some brambles, step around a bit of soggy turf, and there it is: the storm drain's black PVC outflow pipe. Ugly as a snub-nosed revolver, it barely protrudes from the earthen wall of a man-made canal, aiming its collected roadside storm water squarely at Jefferson Village, a condominium development for people 55 and over, less than 50 yards away.

Cleaning up the damage caused by storm water runoff from that pipe and others like it has cost Jefferson Village's 1,800 residents "millions" over the past 15 years, the condo complex's management maintains. Bedford-based McGrathManagement Services wants Yorktown officials to start footing at least some of the cleanup bill.

"We want them to correct the problem that they helped to create," says Martin T. Watkins II, McGrath's vice president and managing director.

Yorktown Supervisor Susan Siegel insists she not only will not but cannot provide any financial assistance. Citing the New York State constitution, Siegel says local governments are forbidden to use public money for private benefit.

"We want to work with them," she says of the Jefferson Village representatives, "but it [the financing] is their responsibility."

McGrath's chief executive officer, Hussein Khoder, says water cascading from land at elevations higher than Jefferson Village runs into the complex, causing flooding, downed trees and erosion. "Water is being funneled through the property," he says.

Asked Friday about the "funnel," Khoder, Watkins and Michael Paciullo, president of the Jefferson Owners Corporation (JOC), took a reporter to the outflow pipe, where a modest flow of water continued long after the rains had come down.

The 36-inch pipe is clearly capable of delivering stronger surges, discharging them into the moat-like canal circling behind this part of Jefferson Village.

Perhaps 20 feet deep, the canal is littered with dead tree limbs and lined with accumulated silt. High-water marks bear witness to what appears to be the runoff's sometimes-startling depth.

For her part, Siegel has consistently rebuffed Khoder's cost-sharing entreaties, saying, "What he's basically trying to do is make his management company look like it's doing a better job than the previous management company."

But her rejections have been based on a belief that Jefferson Village—approved for development in the 1960s, in an age of far-more lenient land-use controls—lies in wetlands, at the bottom of a hill, and simply reaps nature's perverse payoff for land in that location.

Asked Friday about the man-made Fairview Avenue outflow pipe, Siegel refused comment, saying, "I don't know what Mr. Khoder is showing you." She later promised, however, "I will take a look at it."

Khoder insists he's seeking an amicable arrangement with the town, but he does not rule out a lawsuit if they cannot come to terms.