New York is giving Mount Vernon $10 million to fully assess its crumbling sewage system and fix the most egregious breaks.

Mount Vernon's century-old sewers are notoriously bad and have led to decades of flooding and backups into people's homes.

City resident Linda McNeil has suffered chronic flooding and sewage backups into her Brookside Avenue home since she built it 21 years ago and she's not alone.

Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howards says the grant is a positive step forward.

"This is not just about repairing the sewers, this is about restoring the dignity to some of our residents. This is about ending some of the financial strain and burden that these cleanups have caused them," says Patterson-Howard.

This work stems from a 2018 federal lawsuit decided last year where a judge ordered Mount Vernon to bring its sewers into compliance with the Clean Water Act after claiming the city discharged raw sewage and other pollutants into the Hutchinson and Bronx rivers since 2012.