OKs money for emergency expenditures
By John Tredrea, Special Writer
LAMBERTVILLE — Emergency appropriations to cover expenses incurred by Hurricane Irene were approved by the Lambertville City Council Monday night, Mayor David Del Vecchio said.
”Hopefully, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) will cover this for us,” the mayor said Tuesday morning.
The emergency appropriations needed to be approved by the council because the expenses incurred by the hurricane are not covered by the city’s budget, he said.
The appropriations cover $59,698 in repairs to roads and related structures and $17,000 for overtime to municipal employees. The expenses involved getting residents safely in and out of their homes, putting out extra dumpsters to deal with the deluge of trash generated by the hurricane and other costs.
MONDAY’S special meeting also was marked by a two-and-a-half hour talk among officials of United Water, the council and the more than 100 residents who attended the meeting, about the flash flooding of Swan Creek onto city streets during the hurricane.
The focus of the discussion was how United Water handled a dam.
The upshot of the discussions, the mayor said, is that the city will work with United Water on developing an early-warning system for residents near the creek.
”These residents didn’t find out about the flooding until it actually occurred,” the mayor said.
”We want to be able to give them as much advance notice as possible.”
He said the city would confer with the state Bureau of Public Utilities on issues pertaining to operations of the dam by United Water.
Another project the city wants to see happen is the cleaning out of debris from Swan Creek. The debris worsens the situation during flood times, the mayor said.
He said he has appointed a committee to study how the city can better communicate with residents during an emergency when electric power has been lost.
”We also want to talk to United Water and the National Weather Service on setting up a modeling system that would enable the city, on its own, to predict how high the river is likely to go,” the mayor added. “That would help us make timely decisions on when to evacuate.”
The city also is working with its engineering firm, he said, on finding out why an unnamed creek behind Franklin Street has flooded four times in the last two weeks.