OCEANPORT – Local emergency responders are working to get a $75,000 flood warning system in place that would locate up to five gauges on the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers.
Oceanport Police Capt. Mauro “Buzz” Baldanza, the borough’s emergency management coordinator, said he has been working on the Automated Flood Warning System (AFWS) project for two years, since the initial proposal for the project was not awarded a grant.
“The project has been ongoing since 2006, when we first submitted to the National Weather Service (NWS) for the grant,” Baldanza said.
Oceanport led the way in the push to create the shared-service program that would reduce flood damage for local communities, approving a resolution in support of the grant in October 2006.
The towns of Long Branch, Monmouth Beach, Sea Bright, Highlands, Middletown, Rumson, Fair Haven, Red Bank and Little Silver jointly applied for the AFWS grant.
The 10 communities along the Shrewsbury River in Monmouth County are prone to flooding year-round, according to the grant proposal.
Although that grant application was not successful, Baldanza explained that Marianna Leckner, a hydrologist who worked for the New Jersey State Police Office of Emergency Management (OEM), helped find a funding source. Leckner, who is now in private practice, will give a presentation on the project at a flood managers’ conference in October.
Baldanza said that the communities supported the original grant application to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NWS.
“The new grant application will require a 50 percent match,” Baldanza said, adding that Monmouth University and Stevens Institute of Technology had already provided enough of a match to allow no cost to the towns.
Funding would come from the state as part of a mitigation grant and the cost would be under $75,000, according to Baldanza. Maintenance costs would be shared among the municipalities “The intention is that cost would be equally shared among the communities benefiting from this project,” Baldanza said. “A formal memorandum of agreement would be put in place on this issue and this would be the only cost incurred by the towns.”
The 1992 winter nor’easter resulted in the area’s last major flood and caused $270 million in insured damage to public and private property as a result of tidal flooding and storm surge. Storms in October 2005, February of 2006, and April of 2007 caused repetitive flooding in these areas.
Gauges would be placed in order to monitor the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers, and possibly the Bayshore as well, Baldanza said.
Local and county emergency management personnel, in partnership with Monmouth University and Stevens Institute of Technology, propose the installation of the Automated Flood Warning System (AFWS) to be placed at five bridge locations on the two rivers in order to manage flooding and measure flood stages.
The stations would be installed at the Highlands/Sea Bright Bridge, the Sea Bright/Rumson Bridge, the Highway 35 Bridge that connects Middletown and Red Bank, the Pleasure Bay Bridge which connects Oceanport and Long Branch, and the Gooseneck Bridge which connects Oceanport and Little Silver.” The gauges are to inform emergency managers [of] how much water is actually coming in the Shrewsbury River,” Baldanza said. “It would allow us to better gauge tides.”
The AFWS would also be useful for universities interested in that field of study as both Monmouth and Stevens will be using them for research, according to Baldanza.
In addition, he said that local weather stations would be able to use the AFWS to monitor temperature and wind speed, as well as tides.
“So this will help us in the emergency management realm and the educational,” Baldanza said. “It will help us to know how badly we are going to get hit with flooding.”
The flood warning system is especially significant considering that roughly $1.8 billion worth of insured property is situated in the communities along the Shrewsbury River, according to Baldanza.
“That’s 4 percent of the entire state’s figure,” he added. “Since we initially started trying to get this grant, the insured figure has gone up $66 million, and that’s just property. It doesn’t include boats, vehicles, infrastructure costs.”
There is presently no AFWS in Monmouth County, according to the proposal. Emergency management coordinators rely on information provided by the NWS tides on-line for the area in Oceanport at the Gooseneck Bridge and one gauge from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in the Shrewsbury River by the Sea Bright/Rumson Bridge.
These are the only resources available in this area and the gauge on the Shrewsbury River had a proposed outof service date as of October 2007, though funding has extended that time.
“It’s a pretty effective system,” Baldanza said of the AFWS, “and it will provide us with more accurate readings.”
The position of the bridges on the rivers will provide an incremental display on the increasing water levels, according to the proposal. The stations’ data would then be sent to a central location for broadcasting to communities along the river.
This information could also be posted on a secure Web site and made available to the NWS, the USGS New Jersey facilities, the OEM coordinators, Monmouth and Steven’s, as well as selected agencies or organizations that would benefit from the data, the proposal states.
The AFWS would be managed by the Oceanport Office of Emergency Management, which would serve as liaison to the NWS, USGS and N.J. WxNet (Office of the State Climatologist). Participating communities include the 10 municipalities along the river and the Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management.
The data provided will allow emergency managers to make a more informed decision on flood issues with greater time to alert residents for evacuations. It would also allow study of the river and the tides.
The proposal cites information from the NWS relating to flash flood guidelines that indicates that common amounts of rainfall in New Jersey place the communities along the Shrewsbury in danger of a flash flood. In addition, lesser amounts of rain can cause flash flooding when coupled with a high tide.
Based on this information and knowledge of prior flooding in the area, emergency managers often have less than two hours to reach decisions on where and when to evacuate people, the proposal states.
“We are trying to finalize the proposal and hoping to put it in to the state within the next two months,” Baldanza said. “We have been trying to get that done through the emergency managers.”