Disaster Declaration Welcomed in Somers

Hearing of  following the October snowstorm was welcome news for those in Somers.

“I’m so happy we have a presidential declaration,” Somers First Selectwoman Lisa Pellegrini said. “This is wonderful. This will allow us to basically have 75 percent of the cleanup taken care of, which is good. FEMA will pay for overtime of town employees, , it will also help us pay for extra police protection that we had, and also for the huge job of debris cleaning. It’s just a wonderful opportunity.”

The state hired AshBritt to do debris removal for the state, however, Somers chose not to go with the company.

“Ashbritt did visit Somers during the storm and they wanted $1 million to remove the debris in Somers,” Pellegrini said. “That I thought was excessively high at the time. And at the time we did not have a guarantee that FEMA money was coming and I was very reluctant – even though I knew we had a lot of debris – to put the town in such a position that would be responsible for a full million dollars. (Even with the reimbursement) that’s still $250,000 that Somers would still have to come up with. That’s a lot. I know that I’ll come in under $1 million for everything.”

What the town ended up doing was using local contractors – and are continuing to use the local contractors – to clear our right of ways.

“I think that’s much better,” Pellegrini said. “AshBritt is a very high, inflated price and we were able to obtain local contractors and basically keep the money here in Somers. That was very important. Let’s keep the work here in Somers, let’s use our local guys to do things. We’re fortunate that we have contractors who have the necessary equipment that is needed. I’m all in favor of using the local guy.”

Pellegrini said that the town did some emergency cleanup immediately after the storm, and then backed off a little bit to see where things were going and if the declaration was coming.

“Now that we have the FEMA money, we’ve resumed with the contractors so that is occurring now,” she said. “And our DPW is hard at work removing debris from the right of ways.”

The brush field at Field Road Park closed the day before Thanksgiving, and the transfer station hours have now returned to normal. The brush fee that had been waived was reinstated on Monday.

“We felt that it was a sufficient amount of time,” Pellegrini said. “A lot of people have gotten a lot of things cleaned up.”

A revised schedule has been released regarding the , and slowly but surely, everything is getting back to normal.

“It’s just going to take a little bit,” Pellegrini said. “We’re trying to work as best we can and as safely as we can.”