Long Island has the state’s most extensive closed drainage system, with more than 80,000 catch basins that capture stormwater runoff. Nassau and Suffolk counties also rely on 175 culverts, 6,400 outfalls, 910 leaching basins, and 537 recharge basins. Yet these systems no longer function as they should. Years of inadequate maintenance, aging or obsolete infrastructure, and worsening collapses, blockages, and abandonments have created serious risks. Our ecology, economy, and public safety all depend on addressing these failures to ensure a viable future.
It is time to break the logjam so our waterways and our infrastructure can flow as they should.
And while our priority remains improving the region’s environmental water quality, this past year also brought real progress in breaking other long-standing logjams. LICA played a leading role in achieving major public policy wins that will free resources, move long-delayed projects forward, and position Long Island to prosper.
After decades of indifference and delay, LICA helped secure desperately needed sewer funding by championing a successful voter referendum in Suffolk County. Now, for the first time, our communities have a reliable, long-term revenue stream for wastewater infrastructure over the next three decades.
A critical transportation choke point is also finally opening. After years of barriers to accessing one of Long Island’s premier high-tech research hubs, construction began this year on the new Yaphank Train Station, improving mobility to Brookhaven National Laboratory.
We also prevented “Road Closed Ahead” signs from becoming reality. By fighting for an additional $800 million in the state’s five-year transportation capital program, LICA helped protect bridge and highway projects that would have otherwise stalled under inflationary and supply-chain pressures.
Competing and often conflicting state and federal energy policies created stop-and-starts across the region. Through persistent advocacy, LICA helped sustain offshore wind innovation and supported approval of a new natural gas line to safeguard future energy reliability.
LICA’s biggest victory of 2025, however, came in dismantling bureaucratic inertia surrounding Long Island’s long-term transportation funding. We pushed hard and successfully secured commitments to include major regional priorities in the state’s Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), thereby opening access to federal funding for critical projects, such as the Oakdale Merge fix and the reconstruction of the Meadowbrook Parkway/Southern State Parkway interchange.
Looking ahead to 2026, LICA will not rest. We will continue breaking logjams that restrict funding and tie projects in red tape. The current federal surface transportation bill is set to expire next year, and we will work closely with our congressional delegation to ensure that Long Island’s needs are front and center. We will also partner with state leaders as negotiations begin for the next five-year capital plan.
Our legislative agenda includes advancing a Long Island Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) so local leaders – not Albany or New York City – determine our region’s transportation priorities. And we are calling on the state to confront the tragic realities on the Southern State Parkway by establishing New York’s first transportation safety corridor, with doubled fines and more vigorous enforcement to reduce the rising death toll and unacceptable crash rates.
LICA members, thank you for helping break the logjams. Our region is stronger because of your work, your voice, and your commitment.