By David Cruz
NJ Today
For more than 70 years, Bob Smith has seen the South River rise and fall during rains, moderate and heavy, the worst coming last October. A piece of black tape just under his first floor window marks the level to where the water rose during Sandy.
“We even put our furniture up on blocks, and we tried to prepare for it, but that meant nothing to Sandy,” he recalled today. “Sandy came in and destroyed everything. It took the blocks; it took the refrigerator; it took everything. Turned it upside down.”
Today, Smith, one of the first residents in town to agree to a buyout, got the rare opportunity to introduce the governor.
“The past number of months have not been easy for the residents of South River,” Gov. Chris Christie told a crowd of more than 100 residents on Water Street. “They’ve not been easy for Bob, whose home was damaged during the storm and many folks that I’ve met today and met before who have had their homes damaged.”
Christie and DEP Commissioner Bob Martin officially announced that 76 homes in one South River neighborhood and nine others in neighboring Sayreville will be purchased and eventually torn down, leaving open space as a buffer between the South River and the borough of South River.
“All those streets around here; all those residential homes themselves — the commercial buildings that are over there, we can’t buy commercial buildings with federal dollars — but we’re going to buy out all the residents here and that’s the key game plan right now,” Martin explained.
The cost of this round of buyouts will be about $18 million, according to the governor, 80 percent of which will be covered by the federal government. Christie says closings could begin by Labor Day. The ultimate buyout goal — 1,000 homes hit by Sandy and another 300 in the Passaic River Basin that got hit by Irene and a number of other nor’easters. The final cost for it all? $300 million.
“Just so we’re clear to everybody, I never promised, nor am I promising today that we’re going to buy out every home that ever got water in the basement,” Christie responded to a reporter’s question about the scope of the buyouts. “That’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to buy out the neighborhoods that have been most severely damaged after Sandy.”
Standing on his front steps after the press conference, Smith reflected on 73 years in the neighborhood.
“I’ve seen the water level get worse and worse and Sandy was the cream of the crop,” he said. Asked if Sandy had made it clear that it was time to move, he responded. “It’s time, yes sir.”
If things go according to plan, this will have been the final public event held on this block, and before too long, according to the governor, houses like Bob Smith’s will no longer be here.