The Village of Massapequa Park on Saturday hosted an intergovernmental symposium to address the flooding problem that left residents' basements soaked twice within a period of six months.

The meeting revealed the village's belief that the primary cause of the problem lies in the inadequacy of the drainage system under Sunrise Highway. The property under which the system lies is owned by a combination of government entities, several of which were represented at the symposium.

In addition to the residents whose homes were damaged by June 13, 1998 Jan. 3, 1999 floods, Nassau Legislator Peter Schmitt, Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto, and Michael Arens, press secretary for State Senator Charles Fuschillo were in attendance. Public Works officials and engineers from the various municipalities were also present. All of the officials pledged their cooperation in finding a solution to the problem.

According to residents and Village Superintendent of Public Works William Colfer, the area particularly hard hit by the flooding encompasses Philadelphia Avenue from Front Street to Pennsylvania Avenue and Ocean Avenue from Pennsylvania Avenue to Michigan Avenue.

In a telephone interview Monday, Colfer described the flooding problem as a complex, ongoing subject of study.

"It's kind of hard to decide why it happened, because we haven't determined yet what the total volume of water going in there is. But theoretically, drainage systems are designed to handle an inch of water in an hour. What we had on June 13 was one-and-three-quarter inches an hour. But how bad that would cause the flood or how long it would take the flood afterwards to recede is another issue. In the case of Philadelphia Ave., it took over 7 hours for the water to recede, and that should not have happened. So our first attack was to identify why it took so long to get the water out," he said. "In terms of what we can do to keep it from happening again, that's the other side of the coin. That's going to require some large engineering studies to determine where the water comes from, how much comes, and if there is some other place we can divert some of it to take the pressure off. That's going to take some time."

Colfer added, "In our view, what we were trying to get across to the people is that these are very rare rain events. If you look at the weather records for the Wantagh area, which is the closest to us, that have been in existence some 25 years, these were the two worst rain events in that whole 25-year period."

A major problem with the drainage system under Sunrise Highway lies in a syphon, which has a 20-year build-up of debris. The property owner of the area in which the syphon lies is yet unknown. Meanwhile, the village has already spent $60,000 on cleaning it out, and Legislator Schmitt has promised that the county public works department will start cleaning out the rest of it this week.