WAWARSING – A bill that would provide $4 million in funding for the state to purchase roughly 30 routinely flooded homes cleared the state senate last week. Introduced by State Senator John J. Bonacic, the bill would fund buyouts of homeowners in the Hamlet of Wawarsing who have found links to leaks in the Delaware Aqueduct to the yearly floods of their houses — links which are still under investigation by the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation.

The money was left over from a program established in 2008 to use $15 million in funds to purchase homes that were ravaged by floods due to storms and other natural occurrences. While the cause of the flooding in the case of these homes in Wawarsing is generally understood to be a result of the cracked aqueduct that runs underneath the town — and which leaks between 13 million and 35 million gallons of water a day — the circumstances are dire enough to warrant the bill's passage in the state senate.

"Government has the moral obligation to try and make peoples' lives better, not wreak havoc on families," said Senator Bonacic in a press release. "It is my view that the city's failure to accept responsibility is wrong. We cannot, however, wait for the city to act. The state did not cause this problem, but I intend to do all in my power to fix it.

"David had a better chance against Goliath than individual families have fighting New York City in a battle of engineers, lawyers, hydrologists, and geologists. The cost of the litigation is simply too much."

Before the homeowners in the area can start packing their bags, however, the state assembly must pass a companion bill. Currently, work is underway to introduce such a companion bill as soon as possible, though there is no hard date as of this time.