The Record/Herald News

[line] Update: 03-02-2003

Streams grow when the woods are gone Woodcliff Lake sees

results of building

Sunday, March 2, 2003

By DAVE SHEINGOLD ---------------------

Staff Writer

NorthJersey.com

Why it happens no one has adequately explained. But heavy report:

rains leave their mark in Woodcliff Lake today in a way

they never did 10 or 15 years ago, and annoyed homeowners

want something done about it.

"I'm obviously angry,'' says Charles Hlawatch, standing in ,

To his side yard and nodding toward the Musquapsink Brook,

A which is gradually chewing closer to his home on Werimus and more.

Road. "What do I do if the foundation on my house cracks?

I'll have a house I can't live in and I can't sell."

The Record Homeowners on the borough's west side are pressing local times, locations and

and state officials to correct the flooding and erosion more.

wearing away at their property and their nerves. Several

Subscribe times a year, they say, water from heavy storms leaves [TV Listings]

small lakes in yards and covers basement floors. The

Musquapsink, they say, is slowly being transformed from a

stream into a river.

Residents say problems gradually worsened after developers restaurants, cafes,

began replacing woods and fields with mini-mansions on lots

rarely larger than half an acre. The growth occurred in

several communities abutting the brook, upstream and -

downstream of Woodcliff Lake, where about 140 homes went up

Subscribe in the Nineties, mostly on the west side. -

A long-delayed project to reinforce the brook's banks,

upgrade a culvert and a spillway, and install wider storm

sewer pipes probably will start this fall, says Borough

Administrator Gene Vinci. The schedule still faces hurdles.

One issue - the borough's $205,000 contribution to the o

$454,000 project - should be resolved when the municipal budget is approved in May, he says

But the borough also needs five permits from

Department of Environmental Protection to do sensitive work

around a stream - as well as the approval of homeowner

George Catherwood of Woodcliff Avenue to allow a drainage

pipe under his property.

Partners The 40-year borough resident says the plan, which would

divert neighborhood runoff into a pipe that opens into a

ditch running across his lot to the brook, will not solve

his flooding problem. He is insisting that other

alternatives be considered, such as installing an enclosed

pipe closer to the brook or shoring up the ditch.

In this neighborhood, where homes sell mostly in the

$400,000 to $700,000 range, the flooding evidence varies

from house to house and lawn to lawn.

Linda Heineman, who won a Borough Council seat after a

campaign based partly on fixing the flooding, says she

first noticed more water gushing past her house on

Woodcliff Avenue in the late 1980s. Over the years, water

regularly flooded her late husband's ground-floor dental

office, she says. Now, when she goes out of town, she tapes

her doors shut in case a storm strikes.

Half a block away on Brookview Drive, Karina Ackman

installed a sump pump to remove water from her basement.

Her neighbor, Gerald Meisel, points to where he says the

brook has widened by 8 feet on one side.

Around the corner on Werimus Road, Hlawatch recalls how his

children once could wade into the brook and pull crayfish

from the water.

Since a traffic project rerouted the brook in 1995, storm

runoff jets through a culvert as if "you were putting your

finger over a hose," says his wife, Miriam.

Gradually washing away, the Hlawatches' yard now ends

abruptly in a 10-foot drop to the brook, just 12 feet from

their house.

Trees lean over the edge, roots partially exposed. One tree

leans perilously toward the house.

While brook improvement solutions remain under study, the

bigger issue of whether to rein in development remains

unresolved.

Mayor Josephine Higgins says the borough can't stop

developers from building what zoning rules let them build.

"You can't have it both ways,'' she says. "You can't have

all this building and not have flooding. How do you balance

things out? I don't have the answer to that."

Meisel suggests an answer. A retired real estate lawyer who

once represented developers, he urges a regional approach

requiring communities to plan development together, rather

than as individual go-your-own-way entities.

Otherwise, he says, "we will continue to get more and more

water in the brook."

"The water doesn't know from the town boundary."