Bound Brook Goes To Washington

A delegation of officials from the borough of Bound Brook, New Jersey met with federal officials in Washington, D.C. on May 1st. According to the report filed in the May 2nd Star-Ledger, the officials met to discuss increasing the federal funding for the Green Brook Flood project, a undertaking that has only one-third completed in nearly 35 years. In the article, Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Woodley Jr., stated that the “Army Corps of Engineers could complete flood barriers around Bound Brook in two years in funding is accelerated.” Thanks to the efforts of U.S. Representative Mike Ferguson, a Republican from the seventh district that covers a vast area from Hunterdon and Somerset to portions of Middlesex and Union Counties, and other members of Congress, President Bush has proposed allocating another $10 million toward the three decade plus old project, which was initiated in the wake of severe floods back in the early 1970s.

However, Joe Tyrrell points out in his articlethat the Army Corps of Engineers and the local delegation agreed that “roughly $30 million is needed to complete a mile of flood bariers along the Raritan River.” Bound Brook along with nearby Manville were devastated by flooding for the third time in just eleven years when heavy rains from a rare April Nor’easter forced the Raritan to swell and go over its banks. The most memorable flooding prior to mid-April 2007 was from torrential rains spawned by what was Hurricane Floyd, which weakened to a tropical storm prior to its arrival in the Garden State on September 16, 1999.

Last year, Congress was able to allocate $5 million in funding to the area project. In recent years, funding for such projects has been cut while other projects such as improving the levee system in New Orleans have been given greater priority since the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago. In addition, costs to complete such projects continue to increase as long as they are delayed, or not much work is done on them. Damage to the Garden State from this powerful Nor’easter is estimated to be as high as $180 million with residents of a dozen counties including: Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Middlesex, Mercer, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, and Union qualifying for individual assistance from the federal government. April 2007 was the wettest April on record in New Jersey according to the National Weather Service. Rains from the Nor’easter as well as rainfall from a storm system some ten days later produced nearly 12 inches of rain for the month in Newark breaking the previous record set in 1983.