well New Jersey's rainfall totals were already well above average before we hit the spring season but Heavy Rain events have continued right through the summer including the most recent over the weekend where four to five inches dropped in an hour for some towns flooding streets basement and businesses the consistent flooding in vulnerable communities means towns are spending more on resiliency projects and flooding prevention efforts senior correspondent Rena Flanigan reports on whether the investment is enough to minimize damage from these extreme events we're getting very sudden rainfall in huge volumes and the infrastructure that we have just can't handle it it wasn't designed for it Allison McLoud says this weekend storms overwhelmed neighborhoods across Northern New Jersey in some places more than 4 Ines of rain per hour inundated homes and businesses it's a shift in rainfall pattern says McLoud who's with the league of conser voters we used to have slower soaking rains and it gave time for the ground to absorb it for it to you know uh recharge but now when you have these sudden intense rainfalls we're in the most densely populated state we're very overdeveloped it just runs off and the water has nowhere to go and it's happening consistently over and over again to the same houses and the same neighborhoods Mark Zen's mayor of tanly an area where heavy downpours back up in Silt filled Creeks flooding damaged to school in nearby cresc during Ida a 100-year storm that hit three years ago we're getting 50 and 100e storms constantly now it's taken all of us some time to come to terms with the reality of how we're affected um but it's time to invest the money in the infrastructure that makes sense he says tly will fight the floods by clearing out those Creeks with 1.6 million in federal funds plus local matching dollars we have four miles of streams and it costs us about 500 ,000 a mile to clean these out so we're pretty much where we need to be for that process the bigger challenge is is kind of the bureaucracy and the permitting process impacted homeowners will be notified next month overall jerseys getting 72.5 million from the inflation reduction act it pays for multiple projects they've been doing a lot of green infrastructure projects to help retain the water hold the water um some of this money has things like Oyster Bed Investments or resiliency things to help communities prepare for this the level of water part of it will help replace Pavement in flood prone cities like Patterson nework and perthamboy replace it with some landscape systems that can hold water maybe putting storage under the asphalt parking lots uh maybe building some ssts to hold water that we can reuse to irrigate Community Gardens maybe building rooftop gardens you Chris abras with Rutter's Cooperative Extension Service he says green infrastructures a cost-effective way to control heavy runoff and avoid pollution and those projects will be able to hold that water manage that water uh prevent that water from getting into the combined Source system I mean I remember the days when you know you were waiting through literally raw sewage uh for days after a flood event because there was no infrastructure in Place Hoboken mayor Ravi Balor says after superstorm Sandy's historic flood City officials experienced an epiphany Hoboken Midway through a roughly half billion doll effort to build new protections including flood catch basins and parks with rain Gardens to contain downpours Hoboken floods if rain falls harder than 8 in per hour like this past Sunday the good news is that because of the proactive measures Hoboken has taken uh through the years after superstorm Sandy you saw that water recede very quickly he said the next phase includes rolling BMS in a Floodgate that will deploy When Storms like Sandy threaten the city it's not cheap but as storm events intensify in a warming world it's economic reality I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News [Music]