Hoboken Residents Seek Urgency on Storm Mitigation Plan

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, backed by local and state environmental officials, worked to assure residents Tuesday night that a $230 million plan to protect the area from another catastrophic storm following Superstorm Sandy in 2012 is too ambitious and fails to address more immediate flooding concerns that have plagued the city for years.

The Rebuild by Design plan, backed with a $230 million federal grant that followed an international competition sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, calls for the city to build a complex series of water storage facilities, green water drainage systems and pumps that will both prevent storm surge from backing up from the Hudson River and more frequent rainwater from overwhelming the city’s drainage systems.

State and local officials say the plan will take between seven to 10 years to complete, but call it one of the most comprehensive storm mitigation plans ever envisioned.

“This project is one of a kind,” Caleb Stratton, city planner for Hoboken, told more than 100 residents and activists at the forum. ”I think its going to really define how the United States and the greater region, is going to live with and cope with climate change.”

The plan, which covers an area stretching from Weehawken to the Jersey City waterfront, would create a series of underground storage tanks, 40 million gallon flood pumps and a stormwater demonstration project at Hoboken City Hall that is designed to delay and store intense rainfall and storm surge flooding and pump it out to prevent the city from being overwhelmed like it was during Superstorm Sandy.

Hoboken suffered more than $100 million in property damage and near destruction of the Hoboken public transit terminal, with provides commuter trains, light rail and bus service between Manhattan and much of northern Jersey.

Ron Hine, executive director of the Fund for a Better Waterfront, said it would be a mistake to base a future plan on the catastrophic damage caused by Sandy, because the more frequent issue with Hoboken’s infrastructure involves flooding from intensive rainstorms.

“Sandy was a fairly rare event,” he said. ”The flooding we typically see in Hoboken comes from major rainstorms.”

Hine noted that he submitted extensive written comments earlier in the month, which call for, separating the city’s sewer system from the stormwater system. He noted that homeowners in the area suffered raw sewage backing up through their floor drains.

Other critics, while not explicitly echoing the same concerns as Hine, urged officials to do what they can to accelerate the storm plan, because of concerns the community would suffer another major event before the plans are put in place.

“We’re all aware of an we’re not naive enough to know how long all these projects of this magnitude take to plan,” said Gary Holtzman, a Hoboken resident and member of the local planning board. ”I hope you can step on the gas.”