Land Alliance Plans to Address Stormwater Runoff and Shoreline Erosion on Shore Road

For many years, stormwater runoff from Snake Hill Road in Lloyd Harbor has played a significant role in washing away a large section of the shoreline at our Shore Road Sanctuary in Cold Spring Harbor. Steep and impervious Snake Hill Road is a main conduit for stormwater from a nearly 40-acre watershed encompassing Cold Spring Harbor and beyond.

With the generous support of a $192K grant from the New York State Water Quality Improvement Program, we are working to address the problem. We will install a bioswale along our north boundary, repair much of a gully created at the shoreline and implement habitat restoration in the adjacent tidal wetland. Engineering plans have been prepared and submitted to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Army Corps of Engineers. We are awaiting permit approval and hope to begin remediation work this fall. Increasingly severe storms caused by climate change have exacerbated the situation. We are doing our best but must acknowledge that this problem will not be fully solved without addressing the source of the runoff coming from higher elevations.