Menendez Announces $14M Grant For Hoboken Park That Fights Floods

HOBOKEN, NJ — Ever since low-lying Hoboken was flooded during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, officials have worked on new infrastructure to combat the next weather disaster. On Monday morning, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and Mayor Ravi Bhalla announced good news — a $14 million federal grant to create the city's largest park, whose underground basins will be able to collect, treat, and discharge two million gallons of rainwater.

The $14 million FEMA flooding grant will help pay for the $48.5 million Northwest Resiliency Parkin the formerly industrial northwest part of town.

The five-acre park will contain a basketball court with an underground basin that can hold 86,000 gallons of rainwater, an athletic field with a basin that can hold 290,000 gallons, as well as an underground cistern that can hold 50,000 gallons and a storage tank that can hold a million gallons.

Where will the water go? It will be treated and discharged safetly into the Hudson River, officials said. Some of the water can be used to irrigate the park.

For the last two years, the Northwest Park was used as a temporary recreation area for the city's residents, until it was closed this past September to be transformed into a permanent 5-acre park.

City officials said they expect the permanent park to open to the public in fall of 2022.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, who grew up nearby in Union City and lived in Hoboken for a time as an adult, said he knew well the problems caused by flooding in Hoboken.

"I lived here," he said at the event. "It doesn't take a Sandy or an Irene to cause flooding."

Menendez was concerned about scientists' warnings that extreme weather events will become more frequent due to climate change. He cast barbs at Pres. Donald Trump, who has denied that climate change is a major threat.

He said he looks forward to "the day when we can once again have a president in the White House and a majority in the Senate committed to combating climate change. Our children and our grandchildren deserve nothing less. In the meantime, we must do all we can to make sure New Jersey is ready for whatever Mother Nature throws our way."

Hoboken also has two smaller resiliency parks: at Seventh and Jackson streets on the western edge of town, and the small Southwest Park near the city's border with Jersey City.