Strategic recovery planning report, borough of Little Ferry, Bergen County, New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy was the deadliest hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane season, as well as one of the costliest storms to impact the United States coast. It made landfall on October 29, 2012 along the southern coast of New Jersey near Atlantic City. The damage in New Jersey was unprecedented with approximately 346,000 New Jersey homes damaged, of which 22,000 were uninhabitable and nearly 19,000 businesses sustained damage of $250,000 or more. In response to the storm’s impacts, the federal government allocated more than $50 billion to 19 federal agencies as part of the Disaster Relief Appropriations act of 2013. Of that allocation, $15.2 billion was appropriated for the HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program and of this, $3.3 billion was set aside for New Jersey. This Strategic Recovery Planning Report (SRPR) is prepared for the Borough of Little Ferry with funding provided by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs through its Post Sandy Planning Assistance Grant Program. This Strategic Recovery Planning Report address each of the following categories and provides action steps for how Little Ferry can perform hazard mitigation, increase its resilience, and adapt to a changing climate and weather events: Hazard Mitigation – The lessening of the potential adverse impacts of physical hazards (including those that are human induced)through actions that reduce hazard, exposure, and vulnerability; Resilience – The ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions; Adaptation – The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. Also ongoing for post-disaster planning in Little Ferry is a study by the Flood Mitigation Center of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) that is funded by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The study will address ways to alleviate flooding in Little Ferry, Moonachie and Hackensack. Public release of the study is not anticipated until late spring or early summer 2014