Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces State Commits to Funding Engineering Design for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Led Mamaroneck & Sheldrake Rivers Flood Risk Management Project

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul provided an update on storm recovery efforts from Mamaroneck and announced New York State is committed to funding the engineering design for the Mamaroneck & Sheldrake Rivers Flood Risk Management Project. The Governor joined Senator Chuck Schumer is urging the federal government to begin the Army Corps of Engineers-led project so communities will be better prepared from damage from future storms.

VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here. The full event is also on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.

AUDIO is available here.

PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Thank you, Senator Schumer, for gathering us here today to make this significant announcement and to continue to put the pressure on and I understand the sense of urgency that comes with this. Also, a great friend of mine for many, many years, since I first ran for a local office - federal office - Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is always there and always shows up as well.

And my partners from Congress to the Assembly to the Senate, local government. I spent 14 years as a local government official, so I'm well-versed in asking the Army Corps of Engineers for help and pushing people higher up the food chain and now that I'm in a position in state government, I can stop complaining about the state government and I can commit here today that the state will provide the resources for this project to get the engineering and design phase underway. So that's happening right now.

So that was easy. But what's not easy is the aftermath of the horrific storm. And there's a lot of pain out there. I just left to other streets over in Yonkers and around Queens and Long Island, yes, I'm heading Staten Island after this.

So many people's lives were absolutely turned upside down and to the families who had loved ones with them when they went to bed and said goodbye when he went off to work or went to the grocery store, and those individuals never returned. There's a lot of pain in our state right now and our hearts go out to all of them and we stand here committed to do whatever we can to help their families help their neighborhoods, and as the senator said, to build a resiliency wherever we can to fight back Mother Nature. "Mother Nature" sounds nice and nurturing and caring. Well, Mother Nature had a really bad night the other night and because she was so angry, we are still in the throes of a cleanup, where lives have been devastated, property demolished.

And I want to thank them. My heart goes out to the first responders here representing those all over the State of New York. They teamed up with our State Police to literally save people from the raging waters that had turned their streets into rivers and it was a horrific situation, so I'm just here today to say thank you to everyone, let them know that I'm no stranger to clean-up. I've been cleaning up a long time, projects, endeavors -whether it's 7 feet of snow in Buffalo, where people were stranded on highways for 36 hours, right after I was elected, two weeks later. So this is not new to me, and also what we did up on Lake Ontario and I just announced a resiliency project because we had a 100-year flooding event on Lake Ontario, and it happened again two years later.

So when people talk about these 500-year events, 1,000-year events, none of us are buying it anymore. Mother Nature has changed because of what man has done - man-made, man-induced climate change, the extent of greenhouse gases that have destroyed our environment have left us vulnerable, and we all stand together - local, state, and federal officials - to build the resiliency while we can, but also to address the specter of climate change with a greater sense of urgency because the future of climate change is right now. It's happening, we feel it and we're experiencing the aftermath this week, so I want to thank everyone involved. Thank you, senator for inviting me.