Flood Debris Removed from Ramapo River

By Steven Aliano

A $10,000 project by Uniscape Landscaping has been used to remove trees, branches, and other large objects from the Ramapo River, according to an article on MahwahPatch.com. The removal project, along Route 202 south of West Ramapo Ave would help flooding condition in West Mahwah, where the massive amounts of debris left over from Hurricane Irene created a large dam. The removal allows the water in the river to flow better.

The budgeted plan had been scheduled for last September from a Mahwah Flood Conference meeting held in January of 2012. The mayor of Mahwah, Bill Laforet, was quoted as saying that they are looking at longer-term, more costly plans to control flooding conditions on the Ramapo River, but are doing smaller projects such as this now. The article also stated that similar projects have been used in other areas along the Ramapo River in Mahwah, such as by Catherine Avenue, shortly after the hurricane. 

The mayor also stated that this landscaping project was combined with other volunteer programs, such as those the Beautification Committee, Eagle Scouts, the county scoping of Masonicus Brook and the dredging of Winter’s Pond, as well as other individual projects.

I don’t live in Mahwah, but I’m glad that some action has been made to improve the Ramapo River. I would have liked to have seen a follow up article on how Hurricane Sandy has possibly messed up or halted this project, adding more work for this landscaping company and the volunteer groups. That would be a very critical and interesting article, as I would assume the storm would have done some more damage to these efforts.

The Mahwah Patch article featured a couple of photos of the clean-up effort, in which it looked like things have been going along smoothly, at least for the time of when the article was written. However, these photos also showed not a big amount of machinery or people, which could be a case of the low budget that the article stated being used for this short term process. The photos didn’t show much of the debris, so I couldn’t tell just how bad the damage was. I would have liked more photos in this regard, so the reader can get a grasp as to what is being cleaned up and how severe the damage was.