Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul is a Guest on NY1 to Update New Yorkers on Extreme Weather

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on NY1 to update New Yorkers on extreme weather.

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Pat Kiernan, NY1: We got the first round of these storms moving through last night, and as our guy has been telling us, round two is coming this afternoon. Last night, it was a fast moving storm that didn't touch some neighborhoods but then hit other neighborhoods hard and parts of Queens they saw a little under an inch and a half of rain falling in a very short period of time. There was some flooding on streets and highways. There could be a lot more today.

The city and state are getting ready to respond, doing what they can to prepare. Governor Kathy Hochul is with us on the phone now to talk about some of the preparations underway for that heavy rain tonight. Governor, good morning.

Governor Hochul: Good morning, and first of all, I do want to acknowledge your coverage of what is happening today. I'll be up at the funeral for Officer Islam in a few hours and continue to mourn with the community and the law enforcement family as I was up at the precinct yesterday morning, thanking all the officers whose careers were devoted to saving the lives of others, going into harm's way and they've taken incredible risk. And so I just want to acknowledge that before we get into the more mundane. But it could be a potentially dangerous weather event that's unfolding here today as our city collectively mourns together.

Pat Kiernan, NY1: Yeah. Governor, you were in this studio last night and I appreciated your words about gun laws in New York and the situation we're in where another state — a nearby state — can have much laxer gun laws and it sort of makes some of our laws meaningless.

Governor Hochul: That's what's so frustrating. That's why I have called for a national assault weapon ban. They serve no purpose. They're designed to slaughter the highest number of people on the battlefield in an enemy combatant situation, not in a community like New York or an office building in Manhattan. So, that's something I'm going to continue championing — I have for a long time.

We had one at one point for 10 years in 1994, Bill Clinton put it in place and it lapsed in 2004 under George Bush, and I'm calling for that to be restored. So, there's a lot of danger out there, whether it's people coming from other states to thwart our gun laws, which are the toughest in the nation. We don't allow those in our state. But if someone comes in illegally with evil in their heart and intends to do maximum harm, they can be successful. And that's what's so chilling about this.

Pat Kiernan, NY1: Governor, let's move on to our stated reason for this conversation as we look ahead to that heavy rain forecast this afternoon. Some of this is city jurisdiction, some of it's state jurisdiction. Of course you're watching the MTAs response closely. What preparations can be done when we have a forecast like this for an intense and heavy rainfall?

Governor Hochul: Well, first of all, it is informing New Yorkers that despite how beautiful it may look this morning. And I'm in the city, and this is going to have an impact over Long Island, New York City, the Hudson Valley. It's going to be a widespread storm. But don’t be misled, thinking it's going to be fine because your commute is going to be vastly different and we can have a heavy bands with two inches per hour, which is dangerous. That is a flash flooding situation, and I don't want people to get complacent and not be taking precautions themselves. We are already preparing. We've taken major steps. Our swift water teams are pre-positioned. Our stockpiles are open, our emergency operation center is open. We have coordination going on with local governments.

The MTA is ready to deploy pumps and generators, and we've taken precautions in some of our stations. You'll see sometimes you step up before you step down to go into a station. That's by design to stop flood waters from rushing down the steps. As we've seen — our capital plan, which I just got through the legislature — the next five years, has more money to continue building resiliency at the stations.

But, that's a scenario where people are completely disturbing to see. The water, like a waterfall, going down our stairs. So, the MTA's ready — they're prepared to reopen very quickly. You can't prevent this event, but our reaction after the event is also significant and how we can save individuals, but also property damage from happening.

Pat Kiernan, NY1: You've heard all the discussion and it was rekindled on July 14th after that storm that had the subway flooding. The discussion about how this system just cannot handle today's rainfall intensity and that we don't just need a $1 billion or $2 billion to expand the capacity of that system, we need tens of billions of dollars. Do you see a scenario where that money comes from Washington in the near future?

Governor Hochul: Under this President? Hell no. I don't think he's interested in supporting our community when it comes to our safety. In fact, they just withheld $150 million that was dedicated to go to the security on our streets to help local law enforcement.

They just kept that money from us. We've been receiving it for years. And so I'm not counting on Washington to do what's right, and this is very expensive. We're doing it with what we can on individual projects like the MTA resiliency projects, but in terms of the sewer capacity, this system is over 100 years old and investments were not made over decades that would forego the need to do an overhaul all at once, which is what we're facing now.

But until that does happen, there's not the capacity to handle the flow of water, which unfortunately these extreme weather events have become the new normal. So it's not every five or six years you get an event that you can't handle and the flooding occurs.

We had two 1,000 year flooding events in the last year already. One on Long Island, one in the Hudson Valley. And what we saw just two weeks ago, Central Park had the second most rainfall ever in a single hour. So that's what we're facing — extreme weather being the norm — and our infrastructure is not up to task and it is very expensive.

But, I'm making investments in the subway that have been passed over for decades as well. I'm having to be the “Fix the Infrastructure” Governor because so much was not done when we needed it done over years.

Pat Kiernan, NY1: Governor, we'll leave it at that with the forecast for that heavy rain this afternoon. Thank you for making some time for us this morning.

Governor Hochul: All right. Thank you very much, Pat. Bye-bye.