Home Goods, TJ Maxx return to Pequannock

By Steve Janoski

PEQUANNOCK -  In another sign that things are finally returning to "normal" after last year’s extensive flooding, TJ Maxx and Home Goods are officially reopening in the Plaza 23 shopping center this month.

According to officials from the stores’ parent company, TJX Companies, Inc., TJ Maxx is scheduled to open first at 8 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 16. Home Goods will follow on Sunday, Sept. 23.

"We are pleased to be back in Pompton Plains, delivering value and an exciting selection of fashion to serve the needs of the customers," said TJ Maxx President Richard Sherr in a press release; a Home Goods representative said that the company was "thrilled" to be back in Pequannock as well.

Both stores, which are located just off of Route 23 North at the Jackson Avenue intersection, have been closed since August 2011 due to flooding from Hurricane Irene. There was some speculation as to whether they would return, but Mayor Rich Phelan said Monday that the town is happy to hear that the stores are back in business.

"It helps that whole shopping center," said Phelan. "Those businesses have been struggling since the flood, and the extra traffic will definitely help them."

The future of the A&P supermarket, the shopping center’s anchor store, remains in doubt, however.

Phelan said that he would be surprised if the supermarket did not reopen because the location is "very profitable," but he was confident that even if it did decide to walk away, another grocery store would take its place.

"A lot of people shopped there because it was convenient for Pequannock and parts of Wayne," he said.

The Plaza 23 property is valued at about $27,700,000 and pays roughly $475,000 in taxes annually.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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US Army Corps presents new flood study plan to Pequannock public

By Steve Janoski

One year. Just one.

That's the deadline set by US Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) New York District Commander Colonel John Boule last Wednesday evening for completing the first phase of a $15 million study of the Passaic River Basin that officials believe might finally end with a solution to mitigate flooding.
Colonel John R. Boule, the New York District commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Eugene Brickman, Corps of Engineers deputy chief, speak to the large crowd that gathered at PTHS to hear the ACE's plan on river flooding.

But this won't be the same old review, Boule told a collection of area mayors and media members just before an ACE-hosted public outreach program was set to begin at Pequannock Township High School.

This one, he said, is going to take all of the information already accrued about the 983-square-mile basin by well over a dozen studies in the past century (especially the research done in 1987) and build off it.

And, he said, it's going to be done quick.

"If you look at how long it took us to get a recommended solution in the 1980s, we want to do it much faster," said Boule. Finishing work like this inside a year, he said, is "light speed" for the ACE.

Officials see six possible plans on the table as options to alleviate the flooding that has cost more than $3.5 billion in 22 years.

In one calendar year, the ACE wants it narrowed down to one or two realistic options.

Two of the plans involve different configurations of levees and floodwalls along the Passaic and its tributaries, coupled with either bridge and dam modifications or channel modification. Depending on which was selected, this would cost between $840 million and $961 million.

Another plan is a "non-structural alternative" that more or less relies on buyouts and home elevations to move residents out of harm's way. Moving those residents out of the floodway itself would cost an estimated $294 million. Moving them out of the 100-year floodplain would cost $7.3 billion.

Another plan is to improve both Beatties Dam in Little Falls and the Two Bridges area along the PassaicRiver (no cost estimate was offered), while a fifth would be to take no action and let things continue as they will.

The final option would be to bring back the much maligned idea of building a $2.7 billion, 21-mile flood tunnel that would funnel water from the flood basin down to Newark Bay. This plan is unlikely to be resurrected and is only included, Boule said, because it was the 1987 plan's approved solution.

"The Christie Administration has made it crystal clear that that is not an option," Boule said of the tunnel.

No stopping water

The colonel admitted that there has been a move away from what he called "monstrous structural projects," and he attributed that to a combination of the environmental movement and a new view on flooding — it's no longer about controlling the water.

"You can't do that. You've got to change your mindset," he said. "It's about reducing the residual risk to the public to the lowest level that's affordable."

David Rosenblatt, the Department of Environmental Protection's director of construction, agreed and noted that economics has also had a heavy impact on the shift toward policies that rely more on buyouts and elevations than on brick-and-mortar projects.

"There's not enough money out there to do a lot of the structural work that would normally be designed," he said. "(That) would require appropriations from Congress over a large number of years, and those appropriations are rather uncertain… at the federal and state levels."

Once the first phase is complete and the choices whittled down, Boule said, the ACE would take a more detailed, intensive look at the remaining options. The state would have to agree to a final plan before the ACE could have it brought to Washington for congressional approval.

Boule said he understood the frustration on the part of both local officials and residents about the issue and said that the public outreach meetings were meant to offer citizens a chance to voice their concerns and ideas. Shortly afterward, Boule found a packed PTHS auditorium brimming with those looking to share ideas.

The crowd, which likely numbered around 100, appeared willing to listen to the ACE plan, but clearly remained skeptical that any work would ever be done.

Some, like Pequannock resident Al Fabrizio, immediately looked past the ACE's outlined options and asked why other, more immediate fixes such as reservoir management, weren't being investigated.

"If you control the reservoirs, and I don't know why no one has brought this up, we can live with at least one eye closed at night. It's that simple," he said.

Rosenblatt would later comment that the DEP had discussed the regulation of reservoirs "extensively," but the department was not ready to go public with a decision.

"It's not really a workable solution as we see it right now," he said, declining to go into further detail.

Others, like Pequannock resident Nate Glinbizzi, said that the ACE should stick to its deadline as tightly as possible.

"We've had Army Corps of Engineers people retire studying the flood plain. I really want action," he said. "We are waiting. I may not be around in two or three years, but I hope I will be, and I'd like to see this done."

Hans Prell, a Little Falls resident and president of that town's Flood Board, said that he'd spent 60 years in the river basin and had heard "lots of talk" from governors and ACE officials alike but had yet to see any flood prevention work.

He dismissed the idea of a timeline and said that he thought it would be at least 10 years before any kind of groundbreaking occurred.

"I don't care what you say. We're going to have to wait 10 years, and that's government. I know it is, and I see it all the time," he said. "I'll see something happen when I'm 73 years old on that Beatties Dam when I've been fighting for it for God knows how many years."

A number of other residents spoke as well, some just to share their experiences while others, like Lincoln Park Councilman Gary Gemian, decried the lack of government action.

Boule admitted that he could not guarantee that anything would be built as a result of the 2012 study, but said that if there was enough political will and consensus, something could happen in the Passaic River Basin similar to what is occurring in Bound Brook, where $400 million worth of flood-protection measures are under construction.

"There's solutions going on down on the ground. Can they happen here in the Passaic River Basin? Yes they can," said Boule. "If we push the elected officials…to make it happen, it can happen, and you have to believe that. If you don't believe it, then nothing, obviously, is going to happen."

"Since 1903, nothing has gotten done," someone in the crowd yelled after Boule's statement concluded. "That's why we don't believe you."

"I hear you," Boule replied. "I hear you."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Irene's winds meet Hemingway's wisdom

BY STEVE JANOSKI

'Il faut (d’abord) durer.’

Supposedly it was Ernest Hemingway’s favorite saying, and, roughly translated from French, it means "One must (first) endure."

I would be lying if I said this wasn’t a phrase I had liberated for my own use after reading it some years ago, because if my limited experiences have taught me nothing else, it’s that often there comes a time when one must simply put their head down and move forward — as Churchill said, "If you’re going through hell, keep going."

As I write this on Friday afternoon, Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the North Carolina coast, and over the past week, the warnings for this area have vacillated from somewhere between "There’s going to be a lot of rain" to "Repent, for the end is nigh."

It’s yet unknown how hideous the storm will be when it strikes New Jersey, and its strength and the magnitude of the damage it causes may make these words seem entirely foolish by Wednesday, or at least defang them if the city streets remain dry due to a tragedy narrowly averted.

But one lesson that we can take from this storm, or even the threat of this storm, is the same one that we must carry away from all natural disasters: nothing, absolutely nothing, is guaranteed, and things in life can and will change in monumental ways without hesitation.

We all hear, of course, that there is a "reason" for every misfortune, but I’ve never thought that to be true.

I am no fatalist and a particularly weak believer in God, and I cast about between being some sort of bastardized deist to an agnostic depending what time of day you ask, so the idea that there is a "reason for everything" seems a naïve, foolish way to justify the curveballs (and sometimes the artillery shells) that life hurls at us.

Whether an event happened for a reason is simply irrelevant, and putting it in cosmic terms, such as suggesting that a space god deemed it necessary that this thing happen for such and such a purpose, is a waste of time.

What is no waste of time — what is completely necessary, in fact — is to simply determine to continue.

It goes without saying that this weekend will be hard on somebody, regardless if that somebody is in North Carolina, Maryland, or New Jersey, and that even if we don’t have to bear Irene’s hammering might, we will inevitably have to do so again when some disaster, be it public or private, befalls us.

If it does happen to be this weekend, though, it will be a frigid reminder that no matter how comfortable we get, how safe and secure in our happy little lives are, we are but a few powerless days away from being thrown into an unimaginable upheaval that would have been totally foreign to us but a week before.

Hopefully, we will take away lessons from this, because aside from proving the strength of our spines, learning is the only thing that these calamities are useful for.

Maybe we will learn to not build in flood basins and go toe-to-toe with nature, and dismiss the silly ideas of building 10-foot wide flood tunnels to Nutley as exactly what they are: silly ideas.

Maybe we will learn to live with and around the land a little bit better, because we know that when Nature rises up in her full fervor we can be swept from the table like so many plastic pawns.

This is my own conjecture, of course, and it’s more than likely that things will never change because of property tax rolls and political battles.

But for the regular people, the ones in Pequannock and Pompton Lakes and Lincoln Park, who will go through this storm and be worse off for it, there is nothing left to do but keep going.

Endure, once again.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

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Pequannock deals with flooding once again

 BY STEVE JANOSKI

PEQUANNOCK— On Friday afternoon, Adam Denman stood watching the floodwaters rise around his home for the second time in two years on Oakwood Avenue in the southern section of Pequannock, and compared the cutoff neighborhood to the movie "Castaway."

"I'm getting so sick of this," he said, smoking a cigarette just a few feet from the waterline, which extended out into Shady Street.

Denman, 27, worried about his 82-year-old father, who refused to leave the house. By noon, his home was no longer accessible except by boat.

"He's stubborn," Denman said of his father. "He doesn't care…he's got his power, his TV, his radio, and his dog, so he's good. But if it keeps getting worse…if I have to, I'll go through there and I'll pull him out."

As two other residents in waders loaded up gasoline onto a small skiff with an outboard motor, Denman echoed the statements that many of the shocked residents of Pequannock had uttered all day—first, that he couldn't believe it was happening for the second year in a row, and second, that he was tired of it.

Kerry Heck, a 54-year-old chemist who lives at the intersection of Shady andFairview, was marking the waterline with a stick stuck into the sodden ground; in 15 minutes, the line was a foot closer to his house.

Heck had moved into the neighborhood in 1984 ironically, and was cutting wood in order to board up his basement windows in the hopes of keeping the water to a "trickle."

The Fire Department had come knocking at 4:45 a.m., but Heck said he didn't plan to leave unless his basement had serious flooding.

Something is different from the '90s, he said—for 15 years after the '84 flood, he didn't even have a sump pump. Now, he's getting flooded every year.

Why?

"It's those freaking gates," he said, referencing the now infamous dam built on the Pompton Falls by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A similar scene was found in the Village Area off of Jackson Avenue, which went for years without seeing serious flooding before storms inundated it in 2010 and now, in 2011.

PV Park, Woodland Lake, and the lake by McDonald's Beach had all merged into one huge mass, and water spilled into the streets from more than one direction; the situation was quickly worsening.

Rich Michaels, 51, stood on the corner of Village Road and Voorhis Place with Abby, his 14-month-old cocker spaniel, and watched the water creep ever closer to his house.

Michaels has been in the house for the past 24 years, and voiced his frustration at the inaction on the part of public officials when it comes to the floods.

"Every year it gets worse, and they do nothing about it," he said. "They come knocking on the doors to get elected, the councilmen, and after all the promises, this is what we get."

Water touched his house for the first time in 2010, and he said that if the water reached 1984 levels he might get a foot's worth in the house. He's still not leaving though, and said that it's not this flood that worries him— it's how much worse things will get in the future.

"What's it going to do next time? Is it going to take somebody dying down here for them to fix something?" he asked.

Michaels said that although his house is assessed at $422,000, he could never sell it for that much anymore.

"We're trapped," he said. "I can't sell this house. Who am I going to stick it with?"

Michaels said that maintaining the river might go a long way in controlling the flooding and that he'd like to see the river dredged behind the A&P on Route 23.

He admitted that he's having second thoughts about living in Pequannock, and that he wished he'd looked around more when he moved in 24 years ago.

Shortly afterward, swarms of news camera crews who'd been chasing the Pompton's spreading waters descended upon the small intersection, talking with residents and awaiting the arrival of Governor Christie, who spoke briefly at the site around 2 p.m.

Awaiting the governor were Pequannock Mayor Rich Phelan, Councilman Ed Engelbart, and Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Bobbi Jo Murphy, who said that in the end, Pequannock got crushed under 3.6 inches of rain.

Murphy said that both the township and the state were far more prepared for this storm, though a state of emergency was declared much earlier than it was in 2010, which allowed for the National Guard to offer its assistance by noon on Friday in the form of three "deuce and a half" trucks, 2 and a half ton monsters that can traverse nearly any flooded roadway.

Murphy said that this helped evacuate people who had ignored initial warnings, but then decided that sticking around in the flood zone might be a bad idea after all.

Roughly 1,200 residents were advised to evacuate, and a shelter was set up atPequannock Township High School.

The Fire Department said that about 300 people actually listened and left when the firemen appeared at their front doors telling them the water was coming, but Murphy said that in all reality, officials have no idea how many people like Denman's father are still in their homes.

She commended the state and local OEM, saying that they were "right on it" this year.

"We were ready for this," she said. "Last year it took us by surprise because nobody predicted it….but there was a lot of preparation (this year)."

Meanwhile, Mayor Phelan has been undergoing something of a trial by fire—in office for just over two months, he's already got his first disaster to take care of.

The hardest part, he said, will be the cleanup after everything is over.

"We can get people out of their houses, and we can get people into safe places, but it's the aftermath that's really heartbreaking," he said.

Phelan said that today, Christie had mentioned plans to begin putting money toward dredging the rivers, and he feels that the governor "truly wants to do something."

"I think he's sincere," he said.

The mayor isn't sure what the solution is, but said the dredging might help.

He was hesitant to blame the Pompton Lakes Dam though, and said that the flooding was here before the dam was put in place.

"Is the dam part of the problem? Possibly. I'm not an engineer by trade, but it's easy to point fingers at that particular dam," he said.

Cecelia Paul, 47, feels differently.

She's lived in Pequannock her whole life, and moved to Jackson Avenue about 11 years ago.

Last year, her finished basement was completely destroyed by four feet of water, and her house, which is slightly elevated, was surrounded by a nearby stream.

Her husband just finished completely renovating the basement in September. On Friday afternoon, she hoped that as long as her sump pump kept working, she wouldn't have a repeat of 2010.

"I think it's them messing with the gates," she said when asked what she thought was causing the troubles. "I'm very frustrated by that, and I really, truly believe that a lot of this could be avoidable."

When her son graduates from PTHS, Paul said that she's planning on moving.

"I would like to stay in the general vicinity, but just not flood," she said.

How many residents of the township are thinking the same thing remains to be seen.

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