Flooding worse in the Great Meadows?
I just heard that the meadows seem to be much worse this morning - Monday morning the 12th. Anyone know anything? No real rainfall last night, unless I slept through it... Why would it be worse today?
Sep '11
I live in Independence and just learned that three of my neighbors started having water come in late Saturday and yesterday morning. None of them has ever had water come in before. Something must be going on with the water table to make it such a delayed reaction. This is just a guess, though.
I live on Alphano Rd close to the river and have had over 5 ft of water in my basement. We are still pumping now. It seem to recede and then rise again. This has been the worst that I have ever seen in the entire life I have lived in Great Meadows.
The fields behind our house are still under water and we had water in our backyard.
this might be the worst flooding I have seen in the Meadows I took theses pictures yesterday...this is dragstrip road
this is a picture taken from the Shades Of Death road side of the Meadows...by the way the Meadows was once the great Pequest Lake...the Pequest river is still flowing very high also
We've heard more than once that our area (Barker's Mill Rd./Cemetery Road and the surrounding farm fields) actually sit above a significant underground river. I would love to know how the level of that has been impacted lately...
The Pequest River is still running significantly higher than normal, based upon the flow I saw out in Belvidere yesterday. Surprising, since it is four to five days after the last significant amout of rain we have had.
My un-educated ecological guess is that all of the ground water that would normally be able to absorb deep into the ground, all that soil is now drenched. The underwater streams and springs also are to their capacity- with the continued high rivers and runoff still flowing from mountains and rivers, these underground rivers and springs are now overflowing their banks, so to speak- but in reverse, pushing the water back up to the surface.
I would guess in a couple of weeks, everything will be back to normal, but not the usual 3-4 days it takes for the Meadows to unfill itself.
Unless we have more significant rain.
flood levels like these at the Meadows are becoming more common...because the Pequest river below the Meadows needs to be dredged again...it has not been dredged in over 100 years...
@oldman [quote] flood levels like these at the Meadows are becoming more common...because the Pequest river below the Meadows needs to be dredged again...it has not been dredged in over 100 years... [quote]
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Now.. By Cracky....there's a "Shovel Ready Job" ....
Last night was the first i went though the meadows and i was shocked and up set for the people down by the mucks when the river drops they will get some loss of water and the water will go down , I have seen lots of water in the mucks before but not like this ,
the flooding in the Meadows is retreating a little more each day...Dragstrip road is almost above water again
@oldman--we were just talking about the fact that there used to be a lake in the area that had gone extinct, but we were not able to find any info about it. Would you happen to know a source for info about the old lake?
I googled it and found that it was a lake way back when formed by a glacier. Then an engineer did some "engineering" and made the lake into a river. This is just my summary. If you do the right google search, you will find lots of info.
Sep '11
the Great meadows was once known as the Great Pequest lake...at one time it was 300 feet deep...over time it drained out and became a marsh...much like it remains along the back portion of Shades Of Death Road...farmers started to reclaim the land for crops...but there was still lots of marshy areas... and malaria was prevalent because of the swamp...ditches were dug to drain the swamp into the Pequest river...over time it became necessary to dredge the Pequest river below the Great Meadows...a petition was taken up by landowners to get the river dredged...the government had the dredging work done and then assessed the landowners who signed the petition for the drainage work...those who refused to pay the assessment had their land confiscated and sold at auction...thats the rest of the story
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