Steel crates pulled from a brook under the Springfield Avenue bridge. A tree log lodged inside a Maple Street pipe. Catch basins by the hundreds, checked and rechecked after a storm that flooded parts of New Providence on July 3. Mayor Al Morgan laid out the borough's monthslong flood-cleanup effort at Tuesday's borough council meeting, telling residents the work is running ahead of schedule even as the town eyes a $3 million federal grant that still needs Senate approval.
Months of Cleanup, Street by Street
Morgan formed a stormwater task force after the July 3 flood, and the progress report he delivered covers nearly four months of work by the borough's Department of Public Works, its wastewater team and an outside contractor, Montana Construction. Crews removed logs from the brook near the Saltbox Museum and hauled two large steel crates out of the waterway at the Springfield Avenue bridge, while Union County crews separately cleared tree debris from that same bridge four times, according to the borough's account as reported by TAPinto New Providence.
A camera inspection turned up a tree log blocking a pipe on Maple Street, which NJ Transit later cleared. Elsewhere, the borough's wastewater team spent two days clearing a fully blocked pipe between 8th Street and Woodruff, and PSE&G repaired a pipe on Ryder Way that had broken during gas main construction. After residents raised concerns, crews camera-inspected and jet-cleaned pipes on several streets, including Runnymede Parkway and the stretch from Colonial Way to Jones Drive, per the same TAPinto account.
The Catch Basin Count
Borough crews inspected and cleared roughly 1,100 catch basins this year, finding 140 that needed repair and completing fixes on 86 of them so far, Morgan said. Crews also checked and cleared catch basin tops before and after storms on 17 separate occasions, and cleared main drains — including the Maple Street pipes, the Grove Terrace culvert and the Livingston Avenue stormwater facility — before and after 15 storms. Other jobs included a two-day August cleanup that pulled dirt, rocks and tree debris from the town's cement-lined brooks, a three-day cleaning of the Livingston flume retention area, three separate removals of dirt and grit from the Richland Drive retention pond, and eight days spent collecting branches and brush left behind by the July 3 storm.
Morgan compared the scale of the undertaking to the borough's road program, which began in 1999 as a 20-year project funded annually in the municipal budget. He told the council the stormwater effort is ahead of where he expected it to be at this point. Colliers Engineering has spent more than six weeks mapping the borough's storm inlets, manholes and other stormwater facilities, work the borough expects will satisfy a state mapping requirement by the end of the year.
New Rules for Working in the Brook
Morgan also pointed to clearer guidance now available from the state Department of Environmental Protection on how towns can maintain their waterways. In 2024, he said, the towns were told they could not enter the brook at all. Under the current guidance, workers may wade into the brook on foot and remove debris by hand, so long as they avoid machinery.
That shift in state guidance comes as New Jersey communities more broadly grapple with aging drainage systems. Nearly six inches of rain and wind gusts topping 70 mph battered the state in July 2026, triggering widespread flooding and knocking out power to more than 680,000 customers served by PSE&G and JCP&L, according to Tri-State Infrastructure News. The storms also disrupted NJ Transit rail service and pushed the state Department of Transportation to activate its emergency operations center to clear flooded highways and inspect bridges, the outlet reported.
Residents Push for Plain Talk Over Promises
Resident Alex Kogan thanked the mayor for the detailed report but said neighbors want more visible action. He urged the borough to camera-inspect pipes before every paving job and to publish the new stormwater mapping once it's complete, arguing that residents on Maple Street have told him flooding worsened after their road was repaved. His message to officials, he said, was simple: clean the pipes, and talk to residents in plain language rather than rhetoric or fancy words.
Kogan also cautioned candidates against campaigning on rain gardens and bioswales, saying the green infrastructure wouldn't fit the town's layout and would cost more than the borough's police station renovation. New Providence previously tackled erosion with a FEMA-backed outfall restoration after Hurricane Irene carved ravines 20 to 30 feet wide and up to 15 feet deep into roadways and residential properties, a project that secured an NJDEP General GP11 permit and a Somerset-Union Soil Conservation District certification, according to Colliers Engineering.
A Regional $3 Million Ask Still Awaits the Senate
Beyond New Providence's own repairs, the borough has joined Berkeley Heights, Summit, Long Hill and Chatham in seeking a $3 million federal grant for a regional Passaic River flood mitigation project. The funding, intended to address major obstructions in Passaic River tributaries and reinforce streambanks across the five towns, was included in a House spending bill with help from Rep. Tom Kean Jr., according to WRNJ Radio. The project aims to reduce flooding and soil erosion while improving water quality and protecting surrounding land, the station reported.
The grant still needs Senate approval, and Sen. Cory Booker is working on it, per the borough's account. WRNJ Radio has cautioned that the House's passage of the broader Water Resources Development Act of 2026 in September does not itself mean construction funding has been approved or that work has begun. Montana Construction has additional pipe inspections scheduled for the coming weeks as New Providence continues chipping away at its own list of repairs while the regional funding question plays out in Washington.
