EDITORIAL: Horton Avenue needs FEMA to take new look

The watery misery of the people on Horton Avenue in Riverhead continues. And it's still unclear how much the various levels of government can do to ease the pain of the March storms that have cost them the use of their homes.

To make matters worse, somehow the Federal Emergency Management Agency looked at two applications for federal disaster funds - from New York and Connecticut, both based on the same storms in March - and reached different results: We get zilch; Connecticut gets the money. Huh?

Tomorrow, Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) will meet with a top FEMA official, a state emergency management official and aides to Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to sort out this ridiculous result.

If FEMA reverses itself, as it should, two things happen: The feds will reimburse the cleanup costs that the storms have imposed on local governments, and there will be a bigger pot of money available for mitigating future disasters - by elevating houses in flood-prone areas like Horton Avenue, for example, or buying them and making the land open space.

Horton Avenue must compete for this competitive mitigation funding, and our representatives in Washington should push hard for it. The Town of Riverhead, which decades ago let homes be built in this low-lying area, must find a way to fund its match of the federal money. And in deciding how to use it, officials must all listen to the suffering folks of Horton Avenue. hN