By Caroline O’Callaghan
Village of Head of the Harbor residents and local officials showed up Wednesday, May 7, to mark the triumphant ribbon cutting for the reopening of the scenic side street Mill Creek Road, which had been severely damaged from the catastrophic floods that occurred Aug. 18 2024, destroying the entrance to Harbor Road and the adjoining Mill Pond. Officials expressed their hope in what lies ahead for the massive reconstruction project of Harbor Road, since it is a critical access point for residents as well as emergency vehicles traveling to the nearby university hospital.
In acknowledgment, Gloria Rocchio, president of the Ward Melville Heritage Organization, spoke of the impressive completion of the road, which couldn’t have been orchestrated without the ingenuity of Excav Services Inc. Vice President Dylan Governale and team.
“I just learned this morning that these pieces of steel, each one is 30 feet long, it’s 66 pieces of steel here, and it ended up being 23 sections. So, this man worked through sleet, snow, rain, fall leaves coming down and spring coming, and he did it in six months. He’s an amazing young fellow. We congratulate you,” Rocchio spoke of Governale. “To see this completed is extraordinary. It took a lot of effort from a lot of staff people and myself, but we accomplished it in six months, and I look forward to seeing the other road [Harbor Road] completed,” she continued.
Village of Head of the Harbor Mayor Michael Utevsky was also in attendance. He recalled the early days of the road’s reconstruction as chaotic. “There was no road here, there was no bluff — the whole bluff was collapsing. Trees were falling into the creek. The creek had been diverted to this side, right against the bluff, so there was continuing erosion of the bluff,” said Utevsky. “The first thing that [Governale] did was rechannel the creek back where it belonged. Then they had to rebuild the bluff. They had to drive in the steel files. They had to put in vertical deadmen to hold it, so this is just artificially built to reconstruct what used to be here.”
Before billowing floodwaters reclaimed the street-lined bluff, the asphalt on Mill Creek had stood since 1888 and was 1 foot thick — a very prestigious feat of engineering for that time period, according to Utevsky. “Most roads in our village are old carriage paths which have very little foundation and not much asphalt, so I’m surprised by how much asphalt they found here,” Utevsky said.
Despite the celebratory turnout, officials who have been overseeing the restoration of Harbor Road and its surrounding area since August remain discouraged over the lack of progress that’s been made to the main road. Legislator Steve Englebright (D, East Setauket) felt that it was important to center the natural disaster in the discussion, rather than project blame on human failure. “The event was an act of nature…What we need to do is acknowledge that this storm — which killed three people in Connecticut and damaged the whole north central part of Long Island — wasn’t any human being’s fault. If we can acknowledge and agree to that then we can go to the next step which is to agree to work together to solve this problem,” said Englebright.
Englebright emphasized the main priority of restoring Harbor Road would be to service residents in emergency situations, he continued, “Harbor Road being out [of service] right now worries me because for the residents who might have a need for emergency care, or need to get to the university hospital right now, they have to go the long way around and that could cost lives.”
The project was not without challenges. Most of the road was done in January, then Governale had to wait for some items in order to finalize it.
Governale hopes the build can offer residents a sense of relief that the task of an effective, total restoration for Harbor Road is coming.
He said, “It will restore some normalcy to the residents that live down this road, finally.”
