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Flooding in Westchester? The county executive has been there before.
By
Elizabeth Shwe
Published Sep 26, 2026
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DON EMMERT / AFP via Getty Images
By
Elizabeth Shwe
Published Sep 26, 2026
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Epic downpours very often mean significant flooding in Westchester County.
Ken Jenkins, the county executive, knows this all too well.
Ahead of this weekend’s predicted deluge, Jenkins spoke with "All Things Considered" host Sean Carlson about the county’s efforts to get ahead of severe storms.
The county, Jenkins said, is in the middle of revising its plan for dealing with the hazards from severe storms, including mitigating flood risks – to the extent the government can intervene.
Here’s a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Sean Carlson: OK, so Westchester borders the Hudson River and also the Long Island Sound. What about Westchester's geography makes you worried about its unique flooding risks?
Ken Jenkins: Westchester is really a big hill, if you think about it. From north to south, it goes to the Sound Shore. The Sound Shore ends up in the Long Island Sound, and on the western side of the county, it ends up in the Hudson River. So we're surrounded by water and we go downhill. The people at the ends of that downhill. That includes the people on the Sound Shore, in Mamaroneck, Larchmont and New Rochelle in that area, but also Rye.
And then there’s the Hudson River side, all of the river towns — heck, they're river towns — as well as Yonkers on the Saw Mill, where you have places like Executive Boulevard, where it just serves as a big funnel with water running right downhill to a floodplain, which is the Saw Mill River.
Now, this past August was full of flash flooding in our area. How did those storms affect Westchester?
In the most recent storm we had one of our local communities, Rye, make national news because of the flooding that happened there. We had, in that case, close to 5 inches of water that fell overnight, and we had places around Westchester County that went down to about 2-and-a-half inches of rain that fell in that short period of time. The challenge for us as a country right now is that we've had these 100-year storms that happen every year now, and the storm systems, quite frankly, just weren't designed for that amount of rainfall falling so fast.
You mentioned these 100-year storms happening a lot more frequently than 100 years. A lot of people are worried about their flood insurance because the price is going up, or sometimes insurance companies won't even offer it because the risks are so high. Does the county plan include help for residents to get flood insurance to protect their homes?
What the plan does is identify those risks from natural disasters, flooding, hurricanes, and the extreme weather. And then it helps to outline ways to better protect those folks. We just had the recent announcement of the first-in-the nation, real-time flood stream monitoring program. This monitoring system is going to have real-time information about our waterways, with cameras and video, so that someone can see those things. And to your point about flood insurance, what happens in some of those communities, since they're so flood-prone, the answer to residents has been to say, “Well, you live in a wetland or you live in a floodplain … your best answer may be to move." But the question in Westchester is, where do you move to? All those challenges are the reason why we're doing an updated hazard mitigation plan, and then we can work with all of our partners at every level to help the people of Westchester be able to interact and act differently.
What are some of the top concerns that you have heard from residents?
The top concern that we hear from residents is that with the Bronx River, the Saw Mill River and the Hutchinson River, there are places where that they say, "Oh my gosh. There's flooding here all the time. Can't you do something about that?" Well, part of it is trying to clear up some of the storm drains. Some of it is working with local municipalities, understanding that everything is connected. And how do we address that?
Some of it's development-related. Some of the flooding is just because there's too much water coming too fast, that the systems have been designed for a certain amount of water to happen in X period of time. I mean, some folks, you know, they shudder when they hear rain. They're like, "I just don't wanna even close my eyes because I know I'm gonna wake up to a flood, whether it's in my basement, whether it's outside, or I'm not gonna be able to get services because I'm stuck in an area in communities where the flooding is so severe that emergency services vehicles can't get there."
Anytime we have to have the swift water rescue team available in communities, which we have placed in different communities based on the projections that come from our Department of Emergency Services, that says that there's a challenge, and how do we work to get this challenge resolved?
If folks who are listening and they're from Westchester and they want to participate in this, how do they get involved?
They absolutely can go to westchestercountyny.gov, and they can go to our Department of Emergency Services, and learn more.
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Elizabeth Shwe
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