Mike Ferguson's Failed Flood Control Advocacy

by: blue7thpac

Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 08:51:01 PM EDT

The year before Ferguson took office Hurricane Floyd hit our state, and towns like Bound Brook and Manville were devastated, with water rising to third stories of buildings and not falling for days.  Other towns like North Plainfield - where I served as a Councilman at the time - had six feet of water rushing through the town.  I know because I was one of the volunteers pulling people out of their cars to safety that day.

Now, in Mike Ferguson's seventh year as our DC Representative we have seen another flood provide the same kind of destruction.  Added to the 1996 flooding of downtown Bound Brook that is three devastating floods in just over a decade.

I looked at the pictures of boats floating past second floor windows in downtown Bound Brook and thought it was 1999 all over again.  The personal and business destruction is horrific, and the worst part is that it should be wholly unnecessary had our federal representatives come through with the funding we need to fix these flooding issues.

Since 1975 the Green Brook Flood Control Project has been studying and planning to make major engineering changes to the Raritan River and its tributaries to increase flow and retention, reducing the chance that such flooding can occur again.  But all we have to date is a bridge and two levies, and the Army Corps of engineers estimates it will take $430 million in today's money to finish the deal.

You would think that after Floyd there would have been a major effort to fund this project, to get it going as fast as possible to protect the residents and business owners along this flood path.  You would think that there would be some urgency to the work to protect our residents from continued natural disasters.

Mike Ferguson was first elected in 2000, along with a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House.  His colleague, Rodney Frelinghuysen on the neighboring 11th district, was on the House Appropriations committee.  Ferguson himself was being groomed by Tom DeLay in a leadership position as minority whip, the Texas House wheeler and dealer who could get anything done.

Add to this the fact that under Republican leadership earmarked funding for districts increased from about 1,000 a year in 1996 to 14,000 in 2005. Some of these earmarks were incredible, including $454 million for a bridge in Alaska that would have served just a few thousand people.

It's an ideal environment for a Representative to represent the needs of his district.  His party in control, friendly with leadership, delegation member on the Appropriations committee money handed out hand over fist, and a real desperate need for completion of a project that would affect hundreds of thousands of people.  It would take a pretty high level of incompetence to blow this one.

So what did Mike Ferguson get us for the Green Brook Flood Control Project?  An average of less than $5 million a year, and some press releases and photo opportunities for the Congressman to show he cares.

At that rate, the project would take 86 years to completely fund, not including inflation and cost overruns.

  "They said it was not appropriate to bring it up with the president, but I do not miss an opportunity to advocate for this project," Ferguson said. "I'm not going to take a back seat to anyone when it comes to advocating for this, and frankly the advocacy we've done has paid dividends." ?

"It's tragic. It's heartbreaking. It's unacceptable that this project is not completed."

Paid dividends?  It's astonishing that he has the gall, after six budget years under Republican control that he is proud of his efforts, and continues to brag in public about getting pittances tossed his way while touring the flood ravaged town. 

One early estimate, though emergency management people are still counting, is that this flood will cost more than $70 million to recover from.  Somerset County's taxpayers have already put aside one million dollars for cleanup and recovery from this year's story, money that didn't have to be spent.  Millions more will be provided in grants from local, county, state and the federal government. 

These short term costs in the millions don't even take into account long increased financial burden for insurance, which will be even worse than it was before for homeowners, renters and businesses.  That's assuming they can get insurance. 

All told our governments, business owners, insurers, renters and homeowners will be paying far more than $100 million to recover from this flood.  We can assume that similar costs were associated with the floods in 1971, 1973, 1996 and 1999 -- adding up to far more than the $430 million it would cost to fix this problem and reduce the flooding along the Raritan River basin.

It's frankly ridiculous that we have to read in the papers about how Mike Ferguson and his colleagues are bragging on getting us $5 million a year when these floods are costing us an average of $25 million a year in recovery since Ferguson took office.

We've already run through 30 years, and two major floods in the past seven years.  We need our Representative to deliver for us now to avoid the next one, or the next one.

But now Mike Ferguson is in the minority, Tom DeLay is gone and earmarks are under fire from all directions.  Ferguson had a chance to make a difference, a nearly unprecedented chance, and he blew it.