Special to Pascack Press
By Westwood Mayor Ray Arroyo
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has recently revealed new flood elevation maps that expand the flood areas, currently established by the FEMA maps. This will likely place more home and business owners in challenging financial situations regarding flood insurance and mortgage approvals.
In Westwood, 234 property owners in the Federal FEMA flood zones will see more of their property fall into the expanded DEP elevations. And 298 distinct new properties will be captured by the state’s new maps.
Unfortunately, although we are five weeks into the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane season, S790 and A4200 ( legislation imposing flood mitigation protocols on NJ’s private water providers) remain stalled in their respective State House committees. Meanwhile, the physical condition of the drainage basin only worsens.
More must be done to assist municipalities in removing deadfall, blockages and silt deposits that have diverted the flow of the creeks onto private properties and have shallowed out these drainage arteries, pushing increased volumes of runoff further beyond their ever narrowing banks.
In addition to S-790/ A-4200 an interstate/county wide, inter-municipal, coordinated and comprehensive stream stabilization and restoration program is necessary to alleviate local flooding; and to slow the expanding footprint of the state’s regulated flood plain.
Four contiguous Pascack Valley municipalities have asked Boswell Engineering to price drone surveys of the watercourses that wind through our towns: Washington Township, Westwood, River Vale and Hillsdale. This, to identify obstructions, choke points and eroded bank conditions that impede flow and amplify local flooding.
Appropriate DEP approved corrective methods will target the dysfunctional stream anomalies in each town. The restoration costs will depend upon the final design for each area, subject to DEP permitting and approval.
Washington Township has already conducted its drone survey and received its report. Westwood and River Vale are budgeting for studies to be conducted in the fall, when the leaves are down and the aerial views of the creeks are more revealing.
Hillsdale has not yet approved their proposal. (Veolia has generously offered to contribute funds, 30%, towards studies to be conducted going forward.)
Four flood-prone towns generating an interrelated remediation plan, with significant aggregate costs, has an advantage in applying for grant funding. Addressing a cohesive chunk of the problem, although more costly, provides a bigger effective bang for the buck. This economy of scale is more attractive to state and federal grant reviewers.
The costs associated with these DEP sanctioned improvements are a considerable burden on individual municipal budgets.
The brooks course through various municipalities but the property lines are often in the middle of the brook. Towns need permission to enter private property to de-snag, remove obstructions, and implement more extensive restorations.
The Bergen County Mosquito Commission used to de-snag the waterways in our Pascack Valley towns. But after the tragic death of a worker engaged in this task — the agency no longer provides that service to municipalities.
When homeowners do give permission to enter a property, the DEP tightly regulates the kinds of activities, equipment, materials and the amount of soil movement that can be conducted in the brooks.
And when one town finds funding, secures the property owners permission to enter their property and successfully implements a DEP sanctioned method of stream stabilization, the effectiveness of those localized efforts may be undercut should the municipality downstream be unwilling or financially unable to undertake similar remediations.
Consider how vehicles traveling the smoothest newest section of a county road or interstate highway will slow to a crawl, or come to a halt, if the road ahead is peppered with potholes that have remained unaddressed for years, even as traffic volume continued to grow.
But the long neglected maintenance of our common waterways doesn’t just cause irritating delays. Runoff traveling across state and municipal boundaries spills into our basements destroying our property, driving our insurance costs up, making our streets impassable, and our people, and first responders, unsafe.
S-790 and A-4200 can engage one flood mitigation component: pre storm water level modulation (per the current availability of more reliable, storm predictive tools) in the water companies’ holding vessels — like the Woodcliff Lake Reservoir.
However, a coordinated stream stabilization initiative, conceived locally, ought to be funded and facilitated by federal and state agencies. This interstate, county wide, cross borough problem is clearly beyond the limited ability of individual municipalities to adequately address.
Trenton’s priorities seem skewed towards helping us forget our troubles. The state gives us on-line gambling, legalized cannabis and now it wants to give us more liquor licenses.
But rather than forget their problems, New Jersey’s flood burdened constituents might prefer that their state and federal representatives, actually address their recurring and worsening troubles.
Because during the Atlantic hurricane season, a rising tide …sinks a lot of folks.
These are the views of the author, shared in the public interest, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pascack Press. We welcome letters to the editor at pascackpress [at] thepressgroup [dot] net.