Merrick Road reopens in Amityville after culvert repairs, DOT says

Merrick Road in Amityville reopened Tuesday morning after weekend repairs near a culvert required traffic to be rerouted, according to a state Department of Transportation news release.

DOT officials said the road reopened at 5:45 a.m. Tuesday.

On Friday, DOT officials announced the road would be closed to allow workers to fix an issue with the culvert, which carries Amityville Creek beneath the roadway.

State Route 27A was closed "in the vicinity of the culvert" Friday at 6 p.m., Newsday previously reported, and traffic was rerouted onto neighborhood streets.

Village Mayor Michael O’Neill said crews worked through the weekend making repairs and backfilling the area. He said he believes the repairs would have been done sooner if not for the nor’easter with its high winds and rain.

“I give platitudes to the contractor because they worked through the night finishing the paving in order for the road to be open this morning,” O’Neill said, adding that flooding from the storm was not an issue.

“They were working hard and fast; they were sensitive to the impact that the road being closed was having,” he said.

The culvert, according to the release, was "structurally sound," but crews were reinforcing it and installing "additional piping and stone fill."

DOT officials said the issue was discovered last week when engineers working on a road safety project in the area noticed an “unusual settlement of the road surface near” the culvert, Newsday previously reported.

McNeill thanked residents for their understanding during the repairs.

“Understandably the road closure pushed traffic to neighborhoods that normally don’t have that volume of cars,” he said. “Anecdotally I’m hearing people were having problems getting out of side streets; I get the frustration, but it had to be done.”