SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2011
BY STEVE JANOSKI
STAFF WRITER
As Hurricane Irene comes hurtling up the eastern seaboard, the threat of up to 10 inches of rain has many in the flood-prone township cringing and preparing for the worst yet again.
In a Wednesday interview in his office, Township Manager Dave Hollberg said that although he knew it was too early to make predictions, he knew how "the worst" could come about: a massive overflow from North Jersey's reservoirs, which, according to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) website, are already almost full.
Hollberg has been keeping a keen eye on the weather forecasts over the past few days, and he's well aware that a 50-mile swing in the hurricane's eye could be the difference between four and eight inches of rain.
In a place like Pequannock, that's the difference between the typical closing of Alexander Avenue and a catastrophic flood that would inundate the township's roads for the fifth time in 18 months.
He has good reason to worry, said Dave Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University; when Hurricane Floyd struck back in 1999, part of the reason the Passaic River Basin was not damaged as badly as it could have been was that there was a drought, and water levels at the reservoirs were low.
The situation today is reversed, though, and the fact that the land is wet and water levels are high "means that the reservoirs aren't a great help," he said.
"They'll buy a little bit of space, but if we get 10 inches of rain.... we're going to have major flooding," Robinson said.
And the reservoirs are certainly pretty high – those belonging to the City of Newark (such as the Charlotteburg Reservoir in West Milford) directly affect the flow of the Pequannock River, and they're sitting at nearly 100 percent capacity.
Meanwhile, the Monksville and Wanaque Reservoirs, which directly affect the Wanaque River's water levels and are owned by the North Jersey District Water Supply, are about 90 percent full.
Typically at this point in August, these bodies of water are sitting at 75 to 80 percent full, and Hollberg said it will only take a few inches of rain (which Irene nearly guarantees to drop) to top them out as well – and that's when "the worst" starts.
Comparing the situation to a sink with three faucets, he said that the Ramapo and the Pequannock are always flowing strong, but the Wanaque only sees a significant volume of water when the reservoirs feeding it are inundated.
"You turn on two spigots full blast, and it starts to back up," he said. "You turn three of them on full blast... and it's very bad."
Hollberg said that township officials have seen such things occur in the past, and said that river heights skyrocket, sometimes at the rate of a foot an hour, once the reservoirs hit capacity.
He sent a letter off on Tuesday, Aug. 23 to the governor's office that asked Governor Christie to take the "unprecedented action" of ordering as much water as possible be pre-released from the already choked-up reservoirs.
"A prerelease at this time will increase their capacity to absorb rainfall from the approaching storm and allow sufficient time for waters to drain through and out of the river systems before the heavy rains begin later this weekend," the letter stated while pleading its case.
Hollberg knows that even if the state actually acted on the recommendation, it wouldn't solve the problem...but it might help.
"It wouldn't be huge, but for every hundred million gallons that you can get down the river now, today, that's a hundred million capacity that the reservoir has to hold before it starts overflowing in the middle of a heavy rain," he said.
On Friday, township officials found out that the Pompton Lakes Dam was to be opened in order to lower the lake by three feet in order to provide some flood storage, but there was still no word about the reservoirs.
Hollberg's letter had asked for this as well, citing that opening the dam would provide "much needed control data" that could be used to assess the real impacts of the structure on flooding.
Progress has been made in at least one aspect, he said — the Passaic County Office of Emergency Management now notifies township's police desk when the gates are activating, as opposed to past practice that featured no warnings.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/128416458_Full_reservoirs_a_cause_for_concern.html?c=y&page=2
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