Hoboken Mayor Outlines Plans to Address Flooding Problem In The City

Hoboken has been recognized as a role model for flood risk management and has plans to break ground on a park that will have rain gardens and an underground detention chamber for storm water.

The ways in which Hoboken is working to address flooding was among the topics of Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s State of the City speech earlier this week.

Hoboken was recently recognized by the United Nations a role model for flood risk management, she said in prepared remarks posted on the city’s website.

The city has also won the Rebuild by Design competition. With it comes $230 million to protect Hoboken, Weehawken and Jersey City from flooding.

Later this year, city officials expect to break ground on Southwest Park. Now an asphalt lot, it will be designed with rain gardens, permeable pavers and underground detention chambers that will be able to hold up to 250,000 gallons of storm water.

Zimmer said city officials are also in negotiations to create another park and plaza space at 7th and Jackson street and behind the Monroe Center. That park would be designed to keep more than 350,000 gallons of storm water runoff out of the sewer system.

On the northwest side of town, city officials are negotiating over six acres of property, where they want to build park and an underground detention chamber for at least 5 million gallons of water, she said. That may be the way to solve the flash-flooding problems on that side of town, she said.

Construction on a second flood pump for the city is expected to begin soon, she said. That project is being done in partnership with the North Hudson Sewerage Authority.