Flooding in Warren County, NJ — Steps to prevent future disasters (Opinion)

After the devastating flooding over the weekend that closed roads and disrupted businesses across Northern New Jersey and claimed several lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, some local leaders are stepping up to help immediately and over the longer term.

We heard from state Sen. Doug Steinhardt who is leading the way to bring help to the washed-out county.

He's working with the county commissioners Jim Kern, Jason Sarnoski, and Lori Ciesla and the state government to help those in immediate need.

Jim joined us to check in on the recovery efforts for homeowners and the status of the roadways.

One of the challenges with natural disasters is that too many politicians will virtue signal to the radicals, resulting in policies that create new burdens instead of solving the immediate and future problems. Gov. Murphy and the far-left Democrats who have dominated Trenton for the past two decades are quick to blame everything on "climate change."

Then they use the fear of the world ending because of your gas-powered SUV to push for inefficient wind power which is both insufficient to power the grid and clearly a hazard to marine life and commercial fishing, not to mention property value. The blame for "increased storms" and "severe weather" is blamed on climate change which they blame on YOU.

The actual facts and history show a very different, as I've been writing and speaking about for many years. Here's a video I shot a few years ago discussing the governor's misguided policy related to climate.

So where does that leave us?

We have to think practically about what's causing the flooding and how we manage our natural environment making things better for our human population. To that end, I had a very productive conversation with Hanover Township Mayor Ace Gallagher.

He and a group of other Morris County mayors formed something called the Whippany Passaic Flood Remediation Task Force. As Ace explained, the solution to maintaining water management and limit destructive flooding is to manage our rivers.

Currently, over decades of neglect, there are many areas of the Passaic and Whippany rivers where the depth is less than 12 inches. The expected depth to carry the volume of water and handle the excess provided by one of nature's summer deluges is 3 to 4 feet.

The group is proposing a very simple three-step plan that starts with eliminating the outrageous delays from the NJ DEP, which has prevented progress for many years.

1️⃣ De-Snag: Removing the debris and fallen trees from the rivers and banks

2️⃣ Dredge: Begin dredging to deepen the waterways to accommodate the current and increased flow of water

3️⃣ Restore & Reinforce the Banks: Create natural barriers to create stronger more sustainable river banks to contain flowing and rising water

The group has identified at least five areas to begin immediately. Some advisors to the group have estimated that within 18 months these areas could be protected for the next 100 years. This plan requires new leadership at the DEP.

Let's replace the virtue-signaling environmental radicals with common-sense engineers and experts in water and resource management. Then we need to partner with our skilled labor unions to deploy the necessary resources to get the job done.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Spadea. Any opinions expressed are Bill's own. Bill Spadea is on the air weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m., talkin’ Jersey, taking your calls at 1-800-283-1015.

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