NY TIMES ON SOUTH MOUNTAIN DAM

If you missed it last week, The New York Times did a good write-up on the effort to stop the damming of the Rahway River in South Mountain Reservation.

It said, in part:

Striding through the South Mountain Reservation, a patch of wilderness in an otherwise highly developed corner of New Jersey, Fred R. Profeta Jr. does not see the stands of oaks and maples or the shimmering streams so much as their absence.

A lifelong hiker and former mayor of nearby Maplewood, Mr. Profeta is in the vanguard of a movement to stop what he says is the planned destruction of the heart of the reservation, a county park more than a century old through which the west branch of the Rahway River flows.

During Tropical Storm Irene and other major storms, the Rahway, usually more of a creek, caused severe flooding in communities downstream like Millburn and Cranford.

Ever since, local officials have appealed to the United States Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a way to stop the floods, especially in an era of climate change when extreme weather is expected to become more common.

This spring, as part of its study of solutions, the Army Corps released a preliminary analysis of the cost-benefit ratios of seven flood-mitigation alternatives for the Rahway River Basin.

See the rest HERE.

Also stay up with the cause at http://sornj.org/