February 15, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 3 Mahwah State denies township grant to buy flooded homes by Frank J. McMahon The Township of Mahwah has been notified that its application to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection under the Blue Acres Flood Plain Acquisition Program will not be approved. The township was seeking funds to acquire 24 Mahwah homes that experience repetitive flooding. Those homes are located on Glen Gray Road, Catherine Avenue, Brakeshoe Place, Alexandra Court, and Devine Drive in the northern end of the township. The houses are adjacent to or near the Mahwah and Ramapo rivers. The NJDEP’s Blue Acres Flood Plain Acquisition Program, which is an extension of the state’s Green Acres Program, has funding available to municipalities to acquire properties that are subject to repetitive flooding, and that program could have provided up to 25 percent of the value of the property acquisition. The program makes properties that have been damaged by storms, or may be prone to damage caused by storms or storm-related flooding, or properties that may buffer or protect other lands from such damage, eligible for acquisition. The program includes structures on those properties. According to the Blue Acres application filed by the township, the values of the 24 homes range between $262,900 and $565,100, and the total cost of the buyout would be $7,260,100. In a recent letter to Mahwah Township Administrator Brian Campion, however, Susan Seyboldt, the manager of the state’s flood mitigation properties acquisition project, advised that the state is not able to approve the township’s project with the funding that was set aside for the Blue Acres buyouts in the Passaic River Basin. If the application had been approved, the buyouts would have been voluntary on the part of the property owners. The township would have been the purchaser, and the homes that would have been demolished and the resulting vacant land would have been joined with other surrounding vacant land. Seyboldt did advise Campion that the township is eligible for traditional Green Acres acquisition funding. That type of funding would involve a matching grant, The Church of the Immaculate Conception will sponsor a multi-media presentation and lecture, “The Lord of the Rings and the Christian Spiritual Journey,” at 7 p.m. on Feb. 25. The public is invited to journey to “Middle Earth” with Dr. Gregory Glasov, D.Phil (Oxon.), associate professor of biblical studies and coordinator of the Great Spiritual Books Program at the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University. Dr. Glasov earned his doctoral degree from Oxford University in Jewish studies in the Greco-Roman world. Professor to examine ‘Lord of the Rings’ saga and the township would be responsible for providing 50 percent of the total grant. Campion said recently that the township is not filing that Green Acres Local Acquisition application because it would be unrealistic at this time for the township to assume half the cost of the grant. The other application filed by the township to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which could provide up to 75 percent of the value of the properties, is still pending, Campion said. The Blue Acres Flood Plain Acquisition Program was part of a 2007 bond act that authorized $12 million for acquisition of lands in the floodways of the Delaware River, Passaic River, Raritan River, and their respective tributaries, for recreation and conservation purposes. An additional $24 million was approved by the voters in the Green Acres, Water Supply and Floodplain Protection and Farmland and Historic Preservation Bond Act of 2009. This event is sponsored by the Church of the Immaculate Conception’s “Not by Bread Alone” spiritual book discussion group, which meets to discuss books with spiritual themes. This free lecture is open to the community. Reading “The Lord of the Rings” or viewing of the film series prior to the lecture is suggested, but not mandatory. For information, contact Jennifer Edwards at (201) 327-1276 or Jennifer. EdwardsICC@gmail.com. The church is located at 900 Darlington Avenue.