The Municipality of Princeton has joined neighboring towns, including West Windsor, in asking the State of New Jersey to find regional solutions to flooding that has plagued towns in the Millstone River Basin.
The Princeton Council adopted a resolution at its Feb. 14 meeting, on the heels of an identical resolution adopted by the West Windsor Township Council in January, to push state officials to work on finding such solutions.
The Millstone River Basin is a 238-square-mile area within Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Hunterdon and Somerset counties, “making this flooding a multi-county regional problem that cannot be alleviated by independent action of any one municipality,” the resolution said.
The resolution said there has been an increase in storm severity within the region, starting with Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, followed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020 and Tropical Storm Ida in 2021.
The flooding that has resulted from those storms produced economic damage and devastating hardships for residents directly impacted by the flooding, closing down transportation, schools and businesses in the region, the resolution said.
Quaker Road, which connects Mercer Road and Route 1, is frequently closed because Stony Brook overruns its banks. Sections of Mercer Road and Rosedale Road have been closed on occasion because of flooding from Stony Brook.
During Tropical Storm Ida last year, floodwaters from Stony Brook closed Route 206 and demolished the remaining fieldstone wall from the historic Worth’s Mill on the stream. The wall is at the bottom of Bruere’s Hill.
In a memorandum to the Princeton Council, Assistant Municipal Engineer James Purcell wrote that “Princeton has and will continue to experience more frequent and more intense storm events as our climate continues to change.”
“Even less intense storms tax our storm sewer system and cause our streams to overflow their banks,” Purcell wrote.
“The impact of these more frequent and intense storms is not only felt in Princeton, but is exacerbated as the storm flows from our community travel downstream in the Millstone River and commingle with those from our neighbors in West Windsor, South Brunswick, Montgomery and others to cause major flooding in communities, such as Manville,” Purcell wrote.
The Princeton Council’s resolution called on the State of New Jersey to undertake one or more regional projects to address and mitigate flooding in the Millstone River Basin that affects Princeton and neighboring communities.
The resolution stated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers each studied limited areas within the Millstone River Basin and identified areas where regional mitigation projects would be effective.
Those mitigation projects include floodwalls, channel modifications, and raising roads and bridges. They would all require significant financial outlays, environmental permitting and a coordinated regional effort, the resolution stated.