Here's How To Spend Some Of That Stimulus Cash

by: nathanrudy

Thu Jan 29, 2009 at 01:00:00 PM EST

The shopping list is long and varied: $43 billion for transportation projects, $19 billion in water projects, $21 billion for school modernization projects, $32 billion to fund a so-called smart electricity grid, $6 billion to bring high-speed Internet access to rural America and many, many more items that some call pork, others jobs.

According to Herb Jackson, New Jersey is looking at infrastructure dollars like:

$778 million for highway and bridge construction; at least $334 million for new buses, bus stations and other capital outlays; $150 million to upgrade NJ Transit rail; $237 million for loans to upgrade sewage treatment systems; $1.1 billion nationwide for Amtrak improvements.

But for some reason there's no dollars to offset flooding in New Jersey.  Over the past decade New Jersey has been hammered by flooding, with the Delaware river causing major damage twice and central Jersey seeing massive devastation in 1999's Hurricane Floyd and 2007's Nor' Easter.  The picture to the left is from 1999, and a motorcycle shop that was destroyed and had to move out of town.

In 1999 I was a Councilman in North Plainfield serving as the representative to the town's Office of Emergency Management.  When I responded to the call due to flooding, they sent me out in a bucket truck to pull people from cars who had wandered in to the flood water.  In North Plainfield, which has only some minor streams flitting through the town, we had six feet of water in the downtown.  I was standing in that water, tied to the truck, pulling people out of their vehicles and taking them to safety.  

In Green Brook their borough hall was destroyed.  You can see the Bound Brook pictures above.  Manville, South Bound Brook, Plainfield, Rahway, New Brunswick, Piscataway, Franklin, Cranford, etc, etc, all withstood major damage that could be prevented by a solid, well planned engineering project.

For Central NJ there's already a major plan in place to ameliorate the flooding from major storms along the Green Brook and Raritan River/canal.  The Green Brook Flood Control Project is a fully planned, shovel ready effort that will save millions of dollars annually in insurance costs, lost business and government expenditures.  It will save even more in damages when the next major storm runs through, damages that ran in the hundreds of millions between 1999 and 2007.

The entire project from Union County through Somerset County to part of Middlesex County would cost a total of $430 million.  In 10 years it would save the residents, businesses and governments of the area that much.

However, the plan is not specifically listed in the stimulus package.  The representative of this area, Leonard Lance, is a freshman and may not have had the juice to get it put in.  He voted against the bill, as did every other Republican in the House.

It is, however, as vital a project to the physical and economic health of central Jersey as any other, and is ready to start work within a couple months.  It is a non-partisan project, with massive support from people of all political persuasions.

But for some reason the funding has only come in to the project in dribs and drabs, never as a significant portion.  

It's been almost 36 years since the 1973 flood that killed more than a dozen people.  If we can't fund this project now when it meets all the requirements of the major stimulus package being considered -- immediate funding to put money in the economy, quick job creation to offset layoffs in other sectors, long-term infrastructure benefit to the state and country -- then we are totally missing the boat.