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“I am proud to have added this project to our Capital Budget and to support this study,” Rockland County Chairman Alden H. Wolfe said. “The goal here is to obtain the information necessary to develop the right kind of mitigation project and to finally address the terrible flooding that has befallen my neighbors for years.”
The Legislature voted 15-0 Tuesday, July 5 to approve borrowing $250,000 to cover the costs of planning the flood relief project that will include hydraulic modeling of the Mahwah River. Wolfe successfully requested that the project be added to the county’s 2014 Capital Budget during the Legislature’s budget review sessions in late 2013.
Wolfe, the County Executive, Rockland County Drainage Agency Executive Director Vincent Altieri and Squires Gate resident Roy Tschudy then met in 2014 to talk about moving the flood mitigation effort forward and the issue of hydraulic modeling.
“This is an example of the good things that can come out of government when everyone works together,” Wolfe said. “I thank the administration for moving forward with this.”
Wolfe’s efforts to address flooding in the neighborhood go back years, starting in 2008 when Wolfe first began pushing for funding and to connect the efforts of the county, Suffern and Montebello villages and Ramapo town with those of state and federal agencies.
Flooding from the Mahwah River, which runs through Suffern into the New Jersey section of the Ramapo River, has been a significant problem for decades, impacting sections of Western Ramapo, predominantly in the Squire’s Gate and Lake Antrim areas of Suffern, and in the Lake Road area in Montebello. The Army Corps of Engineers have reported multiple “flood events” in this area since 1968, with the most recent destructive floods resulting from Hurricane Irene in 2011.
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