Business View Civil and Municipal | May/June 2022

69 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 5 purchased a walkable sidewalk,” Serr says. “It’s a permanent structure that sits on the water and you use it like a sidewalk on the river. So you can walk, and there are benches and places to sit and also kayak launches off of it.” With all that water, the borough is extra careful to protect itself from the threat of flooding. “We are lucky here to have a very active flood advisory board,” Serr says. “And we are top notch when it comes to handling floods. Unfortunately, because we have had such a long history with it, we have become very proficient at it. Most towns around us will come and ask us to help because we know how to handle it.” Over the past seven years, the borough has been applying for permits from the Department of Environmental Protection, which allows them to de-snag and de-silt the rivers. The process brings it back to the depth they used to be over 50 years ago. Over time, the silt settled on the bottom as it traveled down these rivers and has MERIDIA POMPTON LAKES 261 POMPTONLAKES,NJ 3D RENDERING (VIEW FROM CORNER OF WANAQUE AVE/BABCOCK PLACE) THE BOROUGH OF POMPTON LAKES , NEW JERSEY built up. So a stream that used to be two feet deep is now five inches deep. Serr explains, “So, when it floods, that water comes out. What we have done is de-silted and de-snagged a lot of these rivers and the nuisance floods that we used to have all the time have gone away, at least for now.” Pompton Lakes was first settled in the late 1600s, but became a site of real development in the early 1700s – thanks to the discovery of iron ore. An ironworks built in the area produced munitions for the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Serr reports, “There’s a road called Cannonball Road, which is where the plant was where they built the cannon balls. They made them here in Pompton Lakes and transported them through New Jersey into New York and into West Point, and that’s where they dropped the ammunition. A lot of people aren’t familiar with our history at West Point. There was a large chain built during the Revolutionary War made of huge links of