First the Flood, Then a Torrent of Princeton Paperwork
By Carolyn Jones,
24 days ago
Credits: Steve Waskow/Google Street View
Princeton, NJ -- Steve Waskow lives in a quaint red house on Stockton Street, on the western edge of town. It’s the kind of home that makes you think of a dollhouse, especially in winter when there’s a wreath on the door. Just beyond Waskow’s house, to the west, New Jersey’s oldest working bridge enhances the appeal.
Even prettier, beneath the arches of the Stony Brook Bridge flows a stream. The scenic Stony Brook, a tributary of the Millstone River, glints as it skirts Waskow’s lawn and disappears beneath the trees.
The Stony Brook has slid alongside Waskow’s property for three centuries. His home was built in 1701, making it one of the oldest homes in New Jersey. The brook’s proximity is key to its historic charm.
But lately, something about that picturesque brook has changed. It’s no longer sticking to its banks. During heavy rain, the volume and velocity can rise so quickly that it’s hard to predict the crest.
Indeed, the increasingly volatile Stony Brook has caught Waskow off guard three times. His home flooded moderately in 1999 during Hurricane Floyd, seriously in 2011 during Hurricane Irene, and catastrophically during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
The realities of our warming world, which makes storms stronger and wetter and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, have pushed Waskow toward a painful choice. Unless he wants his home to wash away in the next storm, he has to move his house. Literally.
Waskow, 62, a professional photographer and videographer, is now seeking permission from state, county, and local authorities to remove his house from the floodplain. To pull the house from harm’s way, he must drag it across his northeastern property line and relocate it on his neighbor’s land.
Luckily for Waskow, he has an amenable neighbor. Edwin Bryant, the owner of the property just up the hill, has agreed to give Waskow a section of his land. In exchange, Waskow will give Bryant a northern section of his land, a deft move that will afford Bryant direct access to the banks of the Stony Brook.
Waskow filed the first official paperwork in 2021, one month after Hurricane Ida. He has been running the bureaucratic gauntlet ever since.
At a municipal level, his case has been considered by the Engineering department, the Planning department; the Zoning department; the Department of Public Works; the Planning Board; the Zoning Board; and the Historical Preservation Commission. A municipal land surveying consultant has also had a look.
In keeping with a local government charged with the protection of history, property rights, and an environment in peril, Waskow needs multiple approvals.
These include historic preservation plan approval; a zoning permit; an engineering site-plan review; a subdivision application review; a right of way dedication; a tree removal permit; a fire protection plan; an NJDEP Flood Hazard Area Control Act permit; and a floodplain development permit. His plans must also conform with local regulations such as the Shade Tree Ordinance and the Stormwater Management Ordinance. Several site-specific variances are also required.
At some point, Waskow will additionally need approval from the Mercer County Planning Board, the Mercer County Clerk, and the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
It’s possible other permitting authorities are yet to emerge.
On Monday, September 30, Waskow may have yet another hearing with the Historical Preservation Commission, though at the time of publication he was still awaiting confirmation that his case was on the agenda. This hearing may be followed by another date with the Planning Board. Should these bodies approve his case, he may be able to move on to county-level review. Even then, he will still be far from a green light.
It turns out that moving an historically designated building and changing the shape of an historic parcel of land—one that lies between a storied carriageway and a protected wetland—is not for the faint of heart.
Three times unlucky
The idea to put his 1,000-square-foot piece of history on rollers and move it up the hill did not occur to Waskow all at once. After the first flood in 1999, he thought it was a fluke.
After all, when Waskow had bought the house five years earlier, no one had suggested that the Stony Brook might be a risk. This was back in 1993, before the launch of the internet. Few were talking about suburban floods.
So during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, when the swollen brook bounded up his lawn and dumped two inches of water in his study, Waskow and his neighbors were equally surprised. None of them had seen the Stony Brook flood before, not even Waskow’s neighbor, who had lived on the brook for 47 years.
The second time his home flooded, 12 years later in 2011, Waskow was more prepared. The weather maps had suggested Hurricane Irene could be a big one. Before he had gone to bed that night, Waskow had put his valuables atop tables and chairs. At around midnight, he was awoken by a racket. Downstairs he found his dog, Ginger, barking into the study, which stood two feet lower than the rest of the house. The dog’s bed inside the study had disappeared, and water now lapped against the steps leading to the living room. Waskow tucked Ginger beneath his arm and fled.
After the clean-up, Waskow began to realize these floods weren’t going away. FEMA had updated their risk maps, and Waskow’s home had been placed squarely inside the floodplain. He saw he had two choices. Walk away from the house. Or save it.
A common remedy for flood-prone homes is to elevate them above the level at which a 500-year flood might rise. But Waskow soon realized the impracticability. He would have had to raise his house so high that it would need a wrap-around staircase to get inside. It would have looked like a lighthouse, Waskow said. He discarded that plan.
Next, he considered options for opening the home in a way that would allow the water to flow through. He wondered if a three-season screened door would work. Waskow continued to investigate options for saving his home, including the audacious thought of moving the house elsewhere.
Ten years later, when Hurricane Ida barreled up the eastern seaboard in 2021, Waskow was still mulling solutions. Also, throughout that summer he had been tracking the weather and had noted rising ground saturation from previous storms. As the weather alerts grew increasingly dire on September 1, Waskow snaked a 50-foot vinyl flood barrier around the outer flank of his home. It was designed to deter water up to 8 inches.
As an extra precaution, Waskow loaded his belongings into waterproof totes and stacked them atop furniture. He also monitored the real-time data coming from the flood gauge that the US Geological Survey had installed in the Stony Brook, and which had recently been put online. At 7.5 feet, he knew to worry because at 9.5 feet, his yard would flood. At 10.5 feet, the water would come for his house.
But by the time the app warned that the brook had risen above 10 feet, Waskow already knew. He was still in his living room stacking totes when the water burst through the French doors. It began to swirl at his feet and gush toward his study. Within seconds, the lower room was submerged. Waskow had no time to grab anything but his car keys before fleeing the house.
Ida’s wrath
Waskow wasn’t the only person in Princeton to face peril that night. Emergency teams worked throughout the storm to pluck drivers from flooded streets. In one dramatic rescue, a driver caught elsewhere on the raging Stony Brook was winched from his car by police helicopter. Across New Jersey, more than 30 people drowned, most inside their cars after being trapped by rising rivers. Property damage reached the millions, and the Princeton municipality is still working with federal agencies to fix damage to the town’s infrastrucure.
As for Waskow, the ground floor of his home was engulfed by six feet of floodwater. The velocity of the deluge had been so powerful that it had blown out the back wall of his study, effectively creating the open screen he had considered installing after Hurricane Irene. There is no official record of how high the Stony Brook rose that night because the gauge near his home pegged out at its uppermost scale.
The next morning, Waskow found his study wall floating beside his house, alongside the historically-conforming casement windows. Sinking into the muck of the receding floodwaters were his professional camera gear, treasured antiques, and irreplaceable family heirlooms. His yellow flood barrier sagged inside the wreckage, as useless as a toy.
Months after the storm, Waskow was finding his belongings strewn along the banks of the Stony Brook. One of his blue totes is still stranded in the wetland by Quaker Road. He has no plans to retrieve it.
Time passes, storm by storm
Three years have passed since Hurricane Ida engulfed Waskow’s home. A large tree that had fallen that night still blocks the edge of his lawn, but other than that, there are no clues that the Stony Brook once raged across his property.
Inside his home is a different picture. A plastic sheet hangs against the back wall of the room that had once been his study. What had previously been Waskow’s living room is now his workspace—a cozy room cluttered with furniture, including a desk piled high with the papers measuring his progress through the bureaucratic thicket. A bulging concertina file contains the grant applications he has submitted to federal agencies. Notably, the file is waterproof.
But despite the pressure, Waskow is philosophical. While each level of bureaucracy has slowed him down, he says, the boards and committees are merely performing the jobs they were established to do.
Indeed, local officials seem sympathetic to Waskow’s plight. Public records show them eager to use bureaucratic tools to shepherd him through the system. Dan Weissman, the land use engineer, and Derek Bridger, the zoning officer, noted in a recent report that the Princeton Master Plan — the technocrat’s blueprint for what gets approved — is geared toward cases like Waskow’s.
Quoting from the master plan, the officials state: “Climate change will continue to present an urgent threat.” Weissman and Bridger go on to note which specific elements of the town’s planning Bible support Waskow’s bid to move his house to safety.
Similarly, the historic preservation officer, Elizabeth H. Kim, understands the stakes. As she stated in a memorandum from this August, moving the house will mean losing both state and national historic designation — agony for a commission designed to preserve the past. But as Kim notes: “To leave the house at its current status was not a sustainable option since it was highly likely the house would be destroyed or washed away in the next large storm.”
Despite these endorsements, Waskow’s case is still inching its way through the halls of power.
A special case
Waskow’s file may be uniquely complex, but fortunately, there is something unique about Waskow, too. In the face of problems that would induce most people to walk away, he radiates optimism and can-do energy.
Twice now, Waskow has personally repainted his walls, restored damaged furniture, and repaired the circuit boards on each of his kitchen appliances. Additionally, he has the kind of friends we all might want in an emergency. They own construction equipment, industrial dehumidifiers, and jeeps capable of winching a shed back onto its blocks. They are ready to respond if Waskow makes the call. He also makes frequent reference to the neighbors who have helped him in myriad ways after each flood. One gets the sense that the saving of 561 Stockton Street is a community affair.
Yet the costs of Waskow’s bureaucratic odyssey keep rising. The process itself requires payment, which come on top of the fees he pays to his attorney, architect, and other specialists. His flood insurance premium keeps rising, too. His annual bill has increased by one thousand dollars each year since Ida, even while the coverage amount caps out way below replacement cost for the house. Meanwhile, the risks keep building, too. As the planet warms faster than many scientists had predicted, climate disasters are piling up.
But Waskow doesn’t want to think about that. Instead he focuses on the 3D paper model his architect has made of his home. It includes the addition he will add to its historic core once he gains permission to drag it up the hill. It’s in this home that Waskow plans to spend his retirement—dry, safe, and still part of the Stony Brook community. He just hopes he gets all the approvals before the next storm hits.
Steve Waskow has posted a video of his house durinbg Hurricane Ida on his YouTube page .
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