GREECE, N.Y. (AP) - The Latest on flooding in upstate New York communities along Lake Ontario (all times local):
3:45 p.m.
Water-filled portable dams are being deployed to control Lake Ontario flooding and Gov. Andrew Cuomo says $1 million in state funding will go for emergency repairs to wastewater treatment systems in two lakeshore communities.
Cuomo says Tuesday that a temporary emergency barrier system using water-filled dams instead of sandbags is being deployed in Greece in Monroe County and Sodus Point in Wayne County. He says the two communities will also get $500,000 each to repair and upgrade flood-impacted wastewater infrastructure.
The Democrat says he has also renewed a request to the Army Corps of Engineers for rock structures to safeguard flood-prone areas.
Cuomo previously announced $7 million in state aid to help Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River residents impacted by flooding caused by record rainfall.
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12:15 p.m.
The joint U.S.-Canadian board that controls outflow from Lake Ontario through a dam on the St. Lawrence River says it’s increasing the releases starting on Wednesday.
The International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River board says on its Facebook page that it agreed at a Monday meeting to boost releases to “slightly” increase the rate of decline in Lake Ontario levels.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Lake Ontario shoreline communities Tuesday and criticized the International Joint Commission that directs the board for being too slow to release more water.
A spokesman for the commission says nobody could have predicted the record spring rainfall that raised the lake level. The Army Corps of Engineers says the level of all five Great Lakes will be above normal all summer.
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10:35 a.m.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is again blasting the U.S.-Canadian panel that controls the outflow of water from Lake Ontario, saying the agency bears much of the blame for flooding in New York’s lakeside communities.
The Democrat, speaking during the first of two news conferences scheduled in the Rochester area Tuesday, says that the International Joint Commission “pulled the trigger too late” on increasing the flow of water from the lake into the St. Lawrence River. The lake and river levels are controlled partly by releases from a hydropower dam on the river.
Cuomo spoke in the yard of one of the “hundreds and hundreds” of lakeshore homes and businesses that have been damaged by flooding that began earlier this spring.
During a visit to the Rochester area in late May, Cuomo said the IJC “blew it.”
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7:39 a.m.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is returning to the Rochester area to visit areas along the Lake Ontario shoreline impacted by recent flooding.
The Democrat is scheduled to be at a park in the Monroe County town of Greece late Tuesday morning before heading east to a marina in Sodus Point in neighboring Wayne County.
Both counties have seen some of the worst damage from flooding that began earlier this spring during heavy rains. Some lakeside residents and local officials have blamed the flooding on the international board that governs outflows from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence River.
Cuomo was last in the Rochester area in late May, when he announced that $7 million in state funding would be available to homeowners impacted by flooding.
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