The Village of Roslyn was the recipient of a recent grant from New York State to help with its waterfront revitalization program. The Town of North Hempstead also received a grant that affects Roslyn, namely in the form of investigating stormwater mitigation in Roslyn Creek and Roslyn Pond Park.

The first grant, for $20,000 will help with the preparation of a waterfront program focusing on increasing public access to the waterfront, maintaining its historic character, linking the waterfront to the downtown area, and guiding reuse of underused waterfront land.

Grant money for the Town of North Hempstead concerning stormwater mitigation will total $35,000 and will help to prepare a "feasible study" along with final plans and specifications for improvements to reduce the volume and improve the quality of stormwater discharge entering Roslyn Creek and Roslyn Pond Park.

Both issues have been in the news lately in Roslyn. As part of receiving approval for its projected 250-unit senior housing development in the village, Forest City Daly, a Manhattan-based firm, has promised that it will help with waterfront development, in the form of building an easement along Bryant Avenue, and a waterfront stabilization system.

The grants may come as a relief to the village's attempts to stem its stormwater problem. The issue has involved business establishments along Old Northern Boulevard and threats of fines from the Board of Trustees. The BOT passed a resolution last summer which would give final notice to commercial property owners currently "discharging illegal groundwater and other encroachments for other than commercial purposes." If no progress is made after 60 days of the notice, the village would consider legal action.

The BOT has considered asking the Town of North Hempstead to calibrate a pump station to measure the stormwater flow between 2 and 4 a.m. on any given day. The TONH is responsible for Silver Lake in Roslyn Park. The village may also ask Pall Corporation to help out with costs by paying $14,000 a month for the right to pump its own water into the system.

Previously, the village had tried issuing summonses, setting deadlines and then administering "injunctive relief." However, Mayor Janet Galante has noted that none of those measures has helped to alleviate the problem. Chamber of Commerce President Frederic Carlton opposed the BOT's recent resolution. He has suggested that the village's "code enforcement people" should have handled where the flow of water from local establishments and properties is going. Mr. Carlton also thought the creation of a out-fall pipe might be a solution, noting that this worked to alleviate the same groundwater problem from the Harborview shopping center.

The last time the village did a study on the stormwater situation, they found that there had been a 5.3 percent increase in the quantity of such water going into the sanitary system from the last six months of 1998 to the first half of 1999. The yearly bill for groundwater infiltration comes to $525,000, a number that is expected to remain the same or even above recent budgets. Much of the problem stems from water at Silver Lake in Roslyn Pond flowing into business establishments on Old Northern Boulevard. Many businesses deal with the problem by pumping the water back into the village's sanitary sewage system.