Newark Avenue Drainage Project Gets Town Funding

Flooding along Westwood's Newark Avenue may soon be a thing of the past.

Residents had come to officials earlier this year about the problem, saying their homes had flooded five times in 13 months even though they're several feet above the flood plain.

Borough officials approved an ordinance Tuesday appropriating $8,920 for a drainage project expected to fix the neighborhood's flooding problem.

"It's important that we take care of these things for the residents," Mayor John Birkner said. "You can't ignore infrastructure problems."

The work will mostly involve replacing old drain pipes with slightly larger pipes, borough engineer Stephen Boswell previously said. Much of the work will be performed in-house by the DPW, minimizing the cost of the project, according to Birkner.

The project is a "small fix" that should alleviate the flooding problem, he said. Officials wanted to address it while the solution would still be relatively low-cost, remembering the costly replacement of an 80-year-old sewer line along the Pascack Brook several years ago, Birkner said.

"You need to pay attention to infrastructure in older communities," he said. "Ignoring it would just increase costs later on."