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Flooding in Wayne, NJ streets after heavy rains: Video
On Tuesday, December 19, 2023, homes along the Pompton River were flooded on Fayette Ave. in Wayne, NJ.
WAYNE — An estimated 16,000 tons of silt are scheduled to be removed from Packanack Lake this fall under a longstanding agreement between the association, which manages a private club, and the municipality, which must cover the cost of the dredging.
The settlement stems from a March 1975 court case in which the club sued the municipality to prevent it from moving forward with a drainage project about 1.5 miles to the north. The private club believed at the time that any upstream disturbance would affect the water quality of the artificial lake.
Years later, people who live there still make this argument.
“The damage that has been done has been going on for decades,” said Councilwoman Jill Sasso, who also sits on the Packanack Lake board.
She made her remarks at the recent town council meeting in support of a $3.1 million bond ordinance to finance the dredging project.
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The council will hold a public hearing on the regulation at its meeting on Wednesday.
Sasso said the township has not always kept its part of the court settlement. Because of that, she said, the sludge problem has gotten worse. “I don’t like the dollar amount either,” she said, “but it’s required — it’s mandatory and necessary.”
Councilmen Jonathan Ettman and Al Sadowski objected to the cost of the dredging project when the ordinance was introduced, saying the administration should explore whether the municipality could terminate its nearly 50-year-old pact with the association.
Sadowski said he does not believe all of the mud at the bottom of the lake was dumped there by the municipality.
“I don’t like this in many ways,” he said. “I don’t understand why taxpayers who are already overburdened should have to pay for a private lake.”
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Ettman pointed out that most of these residents did not belong to this exclusive club.
“Taxpayers are spending money to fix this problem, but anyone who doesn’t live on the lake,” he said, “can’t even set foot in it.”
The last dredging of the lake took place in autumn 2012.
At the time, the dredging work took three and a half months, said Mayor Christopher Vergano. More than 500 truckloads of saturated mud were removed, he said.
“You have an obligation to go ahead with this project,” he told council members before they introduced the ordinance. “You have an obligation to do this – that’s plain and simple. I don’t like spending taxpayer money, but I don’t see any way around it.”
The drainage project that was disputed between the authorities and the private club affected Tom’s Lake, a public swimming facility on Concord Place. The municipality planned to divert unfiltered stormwater between this and Packanack Lake, but a judge did not allow the work to proceed without a suitable filtration system.
As a result of the court settlement and an amendment approved by the parties in October 1998, authorities must now check silt levels every two years at 15 locations around the lake and its eastern and western tributaries – the “fingers”.
The municipality must dredge the lake when the sediments reach a certain depth below the water surface.
“If we don’t do this,” said town attorney Matthew Giacobbe, who advises the council, “we’re going to end up in court.” Unless officials can identify “some other culprit” that’s causing mud to build up at the bottom of the lake, “we’re not going to be successful,” he said.
“We will lose,” he said, “and you will be forced to do it.”
Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news in your local community, subscribe or activate your digital account today.
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