Aug 28, 2012
One year after the storms: Frustrated farmers say dredging is a solution

Jeff Bialas got his first sense of looming disaster while picking vegetables on his Pine Island farm a full day after Hurricane Irene's torrential rains had stopped. The swollen Wallkill River, nearly two miles to the west, had spilled over its banks and begun a “low-speed chase” toward his 12 acres.

Now it was nearly underfoot.

“As I'm picking, I can feel it getting spongy below the rows of tomatoes,” Bialas recalled Monday.

Soon, he and his neighbors in Orange County's fertile Black Dirt farming region would find their fields completely submerged in floodwater that destroyed crops they had spent months and millions of dollars nurturing. Times-Herald Record