SOAKED FOR $100M
MTA chief says damage tab could go even higher
The walloping New York took from the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused a whopping $75 million to $100 million in damage to the city’s transit system, Acting MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said Wednesday.
Lieber said he reported the massive damage estimate to the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and he warned the cost could be even higher.
“Usually these numbers creep up as you start to understand the secondary impacts of whatever took place,” Lieber told reporters.
The drenching Sept. 1 storm — which dumped record rainfall on the city, including a record 3.1 inches in one hour — flooded subway and train tracks across the five boroughs, downed trees along Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road tracks, and knocked out electrical substations.
The hit forced Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials to abruptly shut down subway and commuter rail service, stranding some riders in stations and on trains that were halted in tunnels.
The flooding in the subway was made worse because the city’s sewer system was overrun, Lieber said.
“The capacity of the storm sewer system at the street level is insufficient to some of these flash floods that climate change appears to be bringing,” said Lieber.
“When we were ready to reopen the Seventh Ave. subway line, right in the middle of Manhattan, we were pumping like crazy and the sewer system couldn’t take more water.”
At least Ida dumped fresh water into the subway — unlike the salt water that poured into the system during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Salt water “knocks out electrical infrastructure like crazy,” Lieber said.
Lieber and other transit officials this week said they’ve revived a defunct task force with city officials to address street flooding and sewer capacity to keep water out of the subway.
MTA crews did a good job responding to the storm, said Lieber, who has been the agency’s acting chairman for six weeks.
“The subway system is incredibly resilient,” Lieber said. “We took
75 million gallons of water that we pumped out in the days around that storm. We’re an electrically powered industrial operation, and we were back in action in a couple of hours. That’s unbelievable.”