Every late winter and early Spring, when the snow melts and the rains come, Liberty Lake turns into "Liberty Lakes" after any mid-size rain storm. Crafts Creek, usually a cute little babbling brook, turns into a raging river, bringing millions of gallons of water from Northern Burlington County out to the Delaware River, just a few miles away. Upstream development over the past 20 years has brought sediment into the Creek, plus the NJ Turnpike and dozens of subdivision waterbasins send way more stormwater run-off than Crafts Creek can handle. These annual storms, which extend beyond the 20 and 50 year DEP flood plains (they should be adjusted), and are just a few feet from flooding over onto Route 295. Current conditions are barely manageable, and getting increasingly worse, WITHOUT new development.

Slide Show: Flooding of Liberty Lake & Surrounding Property

After the storms, flood waters recede and disappear within a few hours. This is under our current conditions, of being surrounded by farm fields. If the warehouse project is built, these farm fields would be transformed into approximately 10,000,000 square feet of impervious surface: warehouse rooftops, parking lots and road systems. Nine catch basins would send all of the water run-off from this impervious surface into Crafts Creek. According to the developer's engineers, lawyers and lobbyists- we shouldn't worry because "it all gets sent downstream from Liberty Lake." But as you see, when it rains- THERE IS NO "DOWNSTREAM." The water backs up quickly, and floods into a wide river basin with nowhere to go- as Crafts Creek is narrow, shallow, and takes a 90 degree bend on the Liberty Lake property.

Hurricane Irene's Impact on Liberty Lake

 Hurricane Irene rolled into town and dumped a massive amount of water on Crafts Creek and Liberty Lake. Thankfully, Irene came at the conclusion of the Camp season, but she did inflict thousands of dollars of damage to our property, including the loss of our Zip Line Bridge and giant river birch tree. As awful as Irene was, the water volume in Crafts Creek was actually not that much more than it experiences in storms during the wet season (winter and spring).

Check out the video we made the afternoon after the storm-

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