July 16, 2025, Planning Board Special Meeting Transcript - WEHI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 81 the site of it. We're putting it in the same place. It's going to look very familiar, slightly elevated, but you see the water going up to that building which is a concern of ours given the equipment of the water treatment facilities going to be in that building roughly at the same elevation. So, again, Canoe Brook is to your right, it goes basically behind that building. So now you're seeing overflow in a storm where the banks of Canoe Brook overflow. You'll see the entire span of it but eventually I'm going to reference the distance between that left edge of that building and one of the questions I got is, I described it as 150 yards roughly of overflow, right. Streams normally ten feet. They said, how do you know it's 150 yards. Well, I know because basically I measured it. The left edge of that building and where that water is to what I will show on the right side as the camera pans out, which is the green on this Country Club. So if you stop right there. You're starting to see on the right the small white building, that is a well. That's a well house. So basically the well house, basically the water is up to the edge of it. We talked a little about my concern about water under the current conditions, but

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 82 certainly under future conditions all the water getting into the well, contaminating the well. So that well, we're not doing anything with that. That's remaining where it is, so that's one of our concerns. You see, it gets inside, it's not under water yet, but it's close. Continue, please. All right. So stop right there for a second. Yeah, so stop right there. In the 150 yard estimate what you're seeing, that's still sort of looking at some of our buildings. If you go a little bit forward in distance. Right there is fine. In the distance toward the right of this picture, this is a golf course believe it or not. Can't quite tell right now, it's underwater. But the far right is the green for the first hole of Essex Fells. Basically if you look at the span of this, and similar pictures that I received and I regularly see myself when it rains, if you measure that left edge of that building, that's what I call the storage building, our future PFAS treatment facility, to the right edge of that water, which is not completely covering green, but up to the front of it, that's specifically, if you measure it, it's 516 feet. That's 172 yards. To be fair, I kind of rounded down and said 150, but that's a standard, you know, condition today when we have a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 83 moderate to heavy rain. So if you would continue. That's Canoe Brook right there. That, you know, ten to 15 feet you see a little grass in there. That's the high top of the bank. To the left here you're seeing, again, looking back towards the project site, Roseland to my back, you're seeing there's a path right here on the left where the water is. The channel normally is to the right on the, just the right side of that intermediary grass. And this relative to where we were before -- you can keep running. Relative to where we were, this is closer to Oval Road. See now, going back to where the building was. Kind of going back and forth, this is the bridge you saw earlier toward the edge of Oval Road. Again, this is -- if you can stop it there. Although this is the country club golf cart bridge, which is not what I was focused or concerned about in my testimony. Beyond that -- go ahead, please. Let it run. Beyond that is basically, again, that's 163, the house right there in the distance, that's 163 Oval Road, Essex Fells. This water that's coming in, right there, is coming from West Orange. And you can see it's basically

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 84 at the top of the bank and it's also the top of the culvert as I described it in my testimony today under existing conditions. So one of our concerns is if there's any appreciable impact from this development, you know, basically washing out Oval Road. And that's going to have a drastic impact on West Orange infrastructure there and Essex Fells infrastructure. The other thing, again, by reference to my testimony, I talked about a sewer uplift station. That's not shown on this video, but based on where we just were 30 seconds ago in this video, when you're looking at that culvert from here, that sewer uplift station is just to the left of this video. So what happens is this wall of water from West Orange also blocks the culvert from Essex Fells where the sewer uplift station is. So that water backs up, even though the sewer uplift station is probably, estimate, 40 feet to the left. That's the one where we're, I talked about $200,000 repair we're doing this year to that. That's a significant sewer infrastructure station for the Borough of Essex Fells. We can't let that sort of go under our impact of our future stormwater impact. If it's damaged by additional flooding we have a major problem. Please continue. Again, this is looking the other way, back

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 85 -- my backs to West Orange here and Oval Road. I am looking towards Roseland, but you can see basically this is not the entire length of the golf course, the entire width of the golf course, but you can see sort of the flow of water. This is sort of the day after the storm. Obviously you see some of the ponding and that's my concern. This is all -- relative to the project site, the proposed project site this is basically to the southeast. This is, topographically this is downhill and it is downstream of the Canoe Brook. Basically it's the corner of Essex Fells and West Orange and then as you're looking here you're looking towards where Canoe Brook flows which is eventually Eagle Rock Avenue in Roseland and onto other sections of Roseland. MEMBER IN THE AUDIENCE: How long did that building take -- THE WITNESS: I think that's the end of the video. You can pause there for any board questions. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Is that the end of your testimony, Mayor? THE PUBLIC: It is. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Thank you. Mayor, you have a question? MAYOR McCARTNEY: No. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Klein, any questions?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 86 MR. KLEIN: No. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Guarino, any questions? MR. GUARINO: No. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Alper, any questions? MR. ALPER: No questions. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Council Person Scarpa, do you have any questions? COUNCILWOMAN SCARPA: I want to thank the Mayor. I offered to go out and see this myself, because it's really a concern of mine, during that storm but his presentation was very thorough and as I suspected it does look like it really impacts the structure of West Orange/Essex Fells. So I want to thank him. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Thank you, Council Person. Mr. MacNeill, do you have any questions? MR. MacNEILL: No thank you, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Haizel, do you have any questions? MR. HAIZEL: No. MR. PLOCKER: I just have a couple questions. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Plocker. MR. PLOCKER: Mayor, I want to confirm for

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 87 the record, I believe you did testify last time you are not a professional engineer, is that correct? THE WITNESS: Correct. MR. PLOCKER: Okay. And you are then unable to analyze the stormwater proposal that's proposed as part of this application and how that may effect runoff from the subject property, is that correct? THE WITNESS: From an expert perspective, yes, that's correct. MR. PLOCKER: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Thank you, Mr. Plocker. Members of the public have any questions based on the testimony? Please come up. Do any members have any questions of Mayor Davis on the testimony, then please come up and be identified. THE PUBLIC: Marea DePalma. I wanted to know how long did that water take to recede? THE WITNESS: Yeah, I don't have a specific answer. Typically, this is a representative example of what I see. It typically takes at least hours, it takes half a day minimum. And what you're seeing is a lot of water receded in this picture. You see it kind of starting to go back into the banks. This was taken the

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 88 next morning after the storm, so I estimate probably 12 hours after the storm past. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Thank you members of the public. MR. AFRAN: I just want to ask the Mayor, if you could just state the date of the storm event, just so the records clear. MS. McGOVERN: You said December 17. THE WITNESS: Yeah. The video I believe is taken December 18. So by that it was the night before, so December 17 into the early morning of December 18, but that's 2023. MR. KLEIN: One more time the date. We have December 28. THE WITNESS: No, 17th and 18th of December. MR. KLEIN: 17th was the storm, 18th was the video? THE WITNESS: Correct. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Thank you. Okay. Any other members of the public have any questions for Mayor Davis on his testimony? Seeing none. Thank you very much, sir. THE PUBLIC: Donald Gershow, Holmehill Lane, Roseland and I'm also the president of the Holmehill

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 89 Association, which is 65 homes on the other side of Eagle Rock Avenue and of which about a dozen are directly effected by stormwater because they're on the eastern side of our development where the Canoe Brook runs specifically alongside their homes. And I appreciate the Mayor having shown this. And I know I am not allowed to testify, so I just want to mention that just even recently storms -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Sir, you can ask Mayor Davis a question. THE PUBLIC: Mayor, I have a question relative to water that you were showing with the pumping station because we get our drinking water from Essex Fells, right. And you talked about the pumping station there. THE WITNESS: Yes. THE PUBLIC: Right. How does it effect the drinking water, the flooding? THE WITNESS: Yes, so how does it effect their drinking water. Two potential ways. Right now the well is off, obviously we're hoping to restart the well once the new facility is in place. Yes, we provide 100 percent of Roseland's water through multiple wells, including this one. Basically if the flooding gets to great the concern, one concern I have is the well might

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 90 be shutdown because once it gets flooded it can't pump sort of groundwater out into the drinking water community. The second concern is just contamination. Where you have flooding of this nature the waters dirtier from the downhill. We're worried about contaminating the water source long term. Whether that's through lack of recharge, things of that nature. So there's infrastructure damage, there's potential inability to supply the water which we're obligated to supply to four towns in West Essex, in addition obviously any amount we're spending to repair damage. It's the Borough's water customers, that's not just Essex Fells problem, it's basically every resident of North Caldwell, Caldwell, Roseland, Essex Fells, that bears that burden. So that's the concern. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Okay. Any other members of the public have a question for Mayor Davis? Come right up, sir. THE PUBLIC: Mark Patel, West Orange. Based on your experience, right, this storm category, was it closer to medium, have you seen it worse than this, less than this or this was one of the smaller storms?