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A scene in Westwood after Hurricane Irene
“We’ve been ripped to shreds by this small group of people for no good reason,” said Tom Kelly, one of dozens of residents who have banded together to press their respective towns — and United Water — for solutions.
As the damage intensified with at least a half-dozen heavy rainstorms the past several months, so did the resolve of a majority of residents to at last get a decent shot at turning the tide.
From that was born the Hillsdale-Westwood Flood Solution Group (FSG).
“We’re getting it together and getting stronger every week,” Kelly told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “But there’s a group of people who weren’t included who are now bashing us.”
Blame Facebook.
The first loosely organized rumblings about putting an end to the misery were built around a Facebook page called Flood No More, aimed at sharing information, bonding — and, for the most part, venting.
Data was posted during each of the floods that came with several huge rainfalls this year. Members also shared photos of properties and neighborhoods flooded by water several feet deep, as well as shots of the Woodcliff Lake dam’s control gates at various stages.
There were the usual conflicts, differences of opinion, etc. But the members generally helped one another out. They protested together outside United Water’s headquarters.
Then a rift opened.
After essentially airing their ideas and potential strategies in public, a collective of more than a dozen residents began seriously organizing.
“There was no way we were going to put all that out there and lose any advantage we might gain,” Kelley said. “We’ve dealt with this for far too long and we’ve gotten nowhere. We’re doing things differently this time.”
That includes hiring an attorney to represent them.
It made enough sense that several dozen other area homeowners immediately signed up.
“We’re already representing 150 people,” Kelley said. “We’re still hoping to get all 300 who are in the flood zone.”
What the organizers hadn’t counted on was the backlash from a few homeowners who don’t agree with the tactics. After all, they had done the work — holding meetings, assembling data and retaining an attorney.
They don’t understand the dissidents’ beef.
One of the dissenters, Nancy Sico-Culhane, complained on the original Flood No More page that it was disingenuous for a select few to create their own committee, hire counsel and then suggest that others join in after the fact.
Too much pressure?
Sico-Culhane insists that FSG is applying too much pressure to local officials instead of working positively toward a long-term solution. Having been banished from Flood No More after a series of angry posts, she created a new Facebook group, Pascack Valley Against Flooding. As of Sunday evening, it had 44 members.
“[I]t’s hard to stick together when people are making things up, not honest, don’t give everyone options …,” Sico-Culhane said. “[W]e need to get to a solution but not at the expense of others!”
Resident Eve Protin said she’s concerned that officials in both towns will view all flooded residents the same, even though they have different approaches.
“[It] would have been nice to work with our councils,” Protin said. “[T]hey could have been a help. Everyone now will either reap the benefits or suffer the pain from the actions of the group because all flood victims will be grouped together.”
“[A]s you challenge our towns it costs the taxpayers money toward the lawyers who represent the town if in fact they go over [their] monthly fees,” said resident Barbara Meyer, “so why don’t you start allowing our elective officials on both sides of the aisle to do [their] job and work w/ them instead of against them[?]”
The trouble with that logic, Kelley said, is that the tact works great in Hillsdale but not in Westwood.
“In a case like this, they are either with or against us,” added resident Tony Gehringer. “Not much room for middle ground.”
FSG’s attorney, Don MacLachlan of Ridgewood, first spoke for the group at a recent Westwood Mayor and Council meeting, arguing that his clients are being “shut out” of the borough’s attempt to find solutions.
MacLachlan also accused the engineer commissioned by the borough to study United Water’s operations of having a conflict of interest. Engineer Stephen Boswell‘s firm is working on a utility-funded project: the design of a new county intersection at Broadway and Woodcliff Avenue.
Boswell cited the distinctions between both projects, one of which he said is solely for the benefit of Westwood. But MacLachlan countered that Boswell’s documented plan appears to rely heavily on United Water’s data instead of independent verification. He insisted that the residents’ group be able to sit down with Boswell to discuss his work.
MacLachlan presented the governing body with a list of nearly two dozen other demands. FSG even offered to match the contributions that several Pascack Valley towns have made toward the engineering study, just to prove how serious the group is taking its fight.
United Water spokesman Rich Henning said the utility is open to meeting with an FSG representative. However, he repeated UW’s longstanding contention that selling the homes in the flooded neighborhoods and returning the flood plain to its natural state is the only feasible long-term answer.
All else is a waste of time and money that could be better spent on permanent solutions instead of quick fixes, Henning said.
Gov. Christie has leaned toward supporting such a move, although he has expressed concern that the remaining mortgages in those areas may cost more than the properties are worth.
And when you’re talking about roughly 300 properties, most of which exceed $350,000 in assessed value, that’s a lot for the government to swallow. To date, the feds have bought all of two properties in the zone.
Carrying weight
To FSG’s way of thinking, that kind of relief isn’t in the cards — not in this economy and certainly not when homeowners in Little Falls and elsewhere who are constantly flooded have yet to see a dime of buyout money.
Westwood Mayor John Birkner and the Council insist they don’t want any private interests directly involved in work they were elected to do. Making FSG a player in the game would fragment and, ultimately, delay the process, they said. Once the study is complete, Birkner promised, they will conduct their sworn duties in the best interests of Westwood and its residents.
“We don’t want to blindly sit down at a table with United Water and say ‘We need you to do this because a whole bunch of Hillsdale and Westwood residents want you to’,” the mayor said at a public meeting last month. “Elected officials can get up and beat their chest and say, ‘Yeah, we told United Water.’ [But] it doesn’t carry any weight with the State of New Jersey and the permit that United Water has.”
In the end, the mayor said, hopes are that the study provides enough evidence to convince the state DEP to alter that permit.
“We will reserve judgment,” MacLachlan told him. “But you’re certainly putting us in a position where we’ll have to exercise that judgment pretty strenuously if it turns out the report is not accurate and could have been prevented.” He didn’t elaborate.
Kelley, however, said that waiting for a study that could unfairly favor United Water would end up putting the residents at a severe disadvantage. Better to get some sense of where it’s all headed now, he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT, than to reach a point where it will be too late to do anything.
“We just want to know the scope of the study, not all the details,” he said.
Sico-Culhane and the other holdouts insist the entire situation could have been handled less adversarially.
Karolina Marin, one of Flood No More’s original members and a chief FSG organizer, said Sico-Culhane was trying to steer the members toward an attorney of her own choosing.
Sico-Culhane snapped back, saying Marin “better gets the facts right before I start really clearing the air here! I gave her credit and [applauded] all of her efforts all along and this is how I am repaid! I hope people are just careful and ask questions!”
Piringer, in turn, said that Sico-Culhane was “spreading misinformation.”
“Details are available to any serious interested party,” he said. “Let[‘]s concentrate on resolving the flooding situation, not on disparaging others.”
Sico-Culhane replied that MacLachlan was “being pushed down everyone[‘s] throat” and that the results of the choice – in terms of how much his services will actually cost — will emerge over time. By then, she said, it will be too late to do anything about it.
In, out, undecided
As with any collective, there are a few loose cannons all around.
Resident Ellen Fridliand, posted Birkner’s resume, emphasizing that he is “employed in the wastewater treatment industry as a consultant with Bigler Associates, Inc. He is also employed as an Environmental Health specialist for the Bergen County Utilities Authority. Mayor Birkner currently serves as the President of the Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO Local 534.”
This stirred several Flood No More post questioning her motives.
Suzanne Roca Fontana pointed out that Birkner’s education is in waste-water treatment and microbiology. If anyone is qualified to address the utility on its own terms, she said, it’s the mayor. After all, she said, floodwaters receding back into the supply “can cause contamination on a huge scale, and this would pose a problem for UW ….”
What’s more, she said, his experience as a union leader makes him “a potential adversary of the utility companies, not their friend.”
Protin agreed that “our fight is against United [W]ater, not each other. But all of us want to be part of the decision that will hopefully help our problem…. I believe in a democracy not a dictatorship.”
Piringer countered that nearly 15 people attended the meeting at which MacLachlan was retained, which he called “a reasonably good sample.”
“It happened in a private home, but could have been organized anywhere else including the Yankee [S]tadium,” he added. “The selection is not guaranteed to be the right one. After all we are only human, and most of us are not members of the legal profession. I feel however, that it was an honest decision and under the circumstances the correct one.
“We all have the same choice,” Piringer said. “Join this group, join another group, go at it by yourself or create your own group.”
“Anyone who wants in is welcome to ask us how we came to decide on Don. Come see me anytime,” Kelley told the others. “It is time to stop arguing and move forward. If you decide to go another route, that’s fine too…. I gave you my number. I’ll answer any question you ask. If I don’t have the answer I’ll get it for you.”
Flood No More was never intended to be activist, Kelley emphasized.
“Please don’t confuse the different groups,” he wrote on its Facebook page. “This site was started as a place for info and shared experiences.”
Roca Fontana took a different view.
“Bottom line here is if you are asking people to participate in funding representation, they need to have a voice,” she wrote. “[T]here needs to be a group of people, a committee to keep track of everything, to be the VOICE of the group, but … this committee has the responsibility to bring forth candidates … and give them each the floor [to] present us with their plans of action.”
Any resident who contributes to the lawyer’s fee or provides volunteer service in kind, she said, should be given “the right to vote who they want to represent our cause, with the understanding that the majority wins. I am still waiting for this.”
Kelley reiterated that he personally reached out to the residents who said they felt disenfranchised so that they, too, could be part of what he considers “our best shot” at fixing the longstanding problems.
For starters
Marin, meanwhile, emphasized that the new committee’s members are an interim team of volunteers.
“Once a formal group, they can be validated, changed, voted, etc[.,] by members,” she said. Marin also cited several benefits, including that MacLachlan didn’t require an upfront retainer.
Karolina Marin, Woodcliff Lake dam
“There are many choices out there, but it’s a matter of personal preference,” she wrote. “How did I get that information? Listening, research…. I don’t base my opinions in what ‘I heard someone told me’.
“I did not enter on this to sue a company just for money,” Marin concluded. “I plan to undertake this to solve a large scope problem, [w]ith proper expertise.
“This is not about just litigating against someone. [It’s] about changing the law. And for that, you need a solid strategy, a group of skilled people, be humble enough to recognize what we don’t know, and wise enough to use eve[r]ything in hand to work in our benefit… and to not become a roadblock …. [A]t the end, [it] comes to personal choice.”
Protin wasn’t satisfied. “If you[‘re] so confident that the majority already knows what they want what can it hurt [to open decisions to a full vote of all flood-zone homeowners]” she asked. “[I]t would end all the doubt and people could vote/decide and move on.”
Those who put in the time and effort are way past that now, Marin said.
“If you want to keep looking, great! I just can’t. I need to move forward,” she wrote. “[S]pring is coming an[d] [I] need to start formal negotiations so my home is not flooded for the 6th time. Is a lot of work though, and the kind that does not involve just postings….”
One resident took the wider view.
“I know many of you have worked very hard to gather information, schedule meetings and organize events. I appreciate every bit of it,” Peter Pranke wrote. “However, at this point I am getting turned off by what has become a power struggle…. This infighting is absolutely r[i]diculous.
“I thought the entire point was to change the business practices of United Water. When you all fight, they win! All other groups have fallen apart and now this one seems like it is going in that direction. I was at the first meetings and I know this struggle had promise. It brought many affected people together for a common goal.
“I hope you all can put differences aside and work along with each other. If you don’t, it will turn into a big waste of time and money. It seems like it would be nice to vote for things and such, but that isn’t practical. Everyone has a busy life and if some are willing to make so many sacrifices to arrange the many events that have gone on, we should support them.”
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