photo by Boyd Loving
Ridgewood resident’s monitoring of brook helps village locate issue
AUGUST 14, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 2014, 3:28 PM
BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER
He walks onto a stone patio toward his Mulberry Place home, showing where it reached during Hurricane Irene in 2011.
A few big steps forward marks where the waters reached during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
“I use this as a gauge,” Goodell said of his patio, which is marked with black lines that note the distance in feet from the top of the brook’s retaining wall.
For nearly half a century, the village resident has documented the flooding of the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook, and has earned the unofficial title of the go-to data man in the municipality.
Following Hurricane Irene, he put together a book for the village full of photos and information on the flood waters and has made himself available to field questions from village officials. He served on a flood committee for the village in the 1970s and on the Planning Board in the ’80s. A 100-page report he wrote, including drawings of the bridges in the village with flood elevations and flood predictions, is housed in the Ridgewood Library.
“I’d just as soon not have it,” Goodell said good-naturedly of his unofficial position.
