Rancocas Project - Interview Archive

July 22, 2024 w/ MO

Summary (accessible with permission only)
Video (accessible with permission only)
Transcript (accessible with permission only)
Selected Excerpts

This occurred this year. My basement flooded with raw sewage as a result of a night of heavy rains. I believe I wrote this down here. Uh, the first night was, um, 1/10 this year. So, so January, yeah. 10th.

I actually remember getting someone else's message about flooding around... I think it's the same day. It must have been really bad.

So it destroyed my finished basement, my workshop, original artwork. And I've been unable to work since. I filed a claim with the township. Because shortly after that, um, I wrote that date on 1/21/24. There was a total sewer collapse right down the street from me. So this was obviously an oncoming problem, an oncoming thing that was not noticed, remedied, monitored in any way. There was a complete sewer collapse. I had more flooding down there at that time. And even more flooding, I believe was 3/6 of this year. So I began clean up everything by myself.

…

I lived here because I can’t go anywhere else. Nobody's helping me. Nobody's covering me. So I've been here trying to reconstruct my basement by myself. I'm getting no help from my homeowner's insurance or the township up to this point. And I've inquired many times. I've gone through all the claim channels and these legal channels that I can, and I'm not getting help so far. So I'm down there still since January trying to clean up and reconstruct and get my basement back.

…

It was 1:00 AM that night to this gurgling sound in my upstairs bathroom toilet.

...

And it was so violent. I thought that maybe a dog or something that came in, or somebody actually came in in my house and they're lapping. Toilet. I didn't know. But then as I'm awakened and, and I'm going up and down the stairs and trying to figure out what's going on, my neighbor comes to my house and says, 'go into your basement. Mine just overflowed with sewage. And we're like up to our ankles in sewage right now." So I went down, I could see that the toilet was full, but it hadn't overflowed yet. So I went back out into the street. There was a crew out there saying that, that they could do absolutely nothing until the water levels went down.

…

So I came back into the basement, took a peek, and at that point it began coming over and it just would not stop. It was pouring over the toilet, raw sewage water.

…

Shortly after, like 10 days after... right down the road, a a couple houses down, not even like three or four houses, there's a corner, and on that intersection there was a sinkhole from a complete sewer collapse. So the roads were shut down. It was an enormous, I think 25 by 25 foot crater at that intersection… I think 25 by 25 feet. Like, it looked like a crater of an asteroid or something.

…

Your hard earned money that you give to these people every month...To help you when you need it. And none of them are helping me.

…

I never thought that I would consider leaving here, but I want to leave here, you know, like based on this, based on what the township, their negligence, their indifference to helping me. I, I never thought until now about leaving here, but I would like to now.

…

You feel forced out by the lack of support.

…

Yeah. I do feel very alone in all this.

July 8, 2024 w/ KL

Summary (accessible with permission only)
Video (accessible with permission only)
Transcript (accessible with permission only)
Selected Excerpts

This land is older than any of the people that have ever walked on it.

...

I mean, there's things out there that are older than, than people themselves. Yeah. And there is no, there is no, um, this people or that people, it's all of us.

...

People forget all the time, we're all gonna die at some point.

We are all dirt.

You know, we all came from it. We're going back to it. Why not make it beautiful?

...

You can smell the snow in the air. You can almost hear the snowflakes hitting, hitting the ground or hitting the other snow. And it just, you get this, this peaceful... I know it's cold out, but you get like the, almost like this cocoon feeling. Because snow's an insulator. Yeah. So with the sound. And just the way it falls and everything, it just kind of feels like you're in just this little orb of privacy.

...

And it's like a lost little world that you can get out there too. Wow. Um, and it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing.

...

Energy Mm-Hmm. They're waking up and that disturbs that cycle. And then they end up like starving through hibernation. Because their body's using more energy than it should be.

...

He calls it a hidden little gem. And we all, we've all just kind of picked that up and it's just, it is, it's amazing out there. I mean the life that thrives in that little stretch of water. Yeah. And it's right through Burlington County. Basically. It cuts New Jersey in half. The Rancocas is a creek. If you go from North Jersey to South Jersey. Yeah. Unless you're right along the actual coast, you cross over a section of the Rancocas Creek.

...

So it's, it, it follows nature. It follows life. Yeah. Trees do it, rivers do it, streams do it. I mean, it goes, it goes where it needs to go. And, and, and unfortunately people have lost that connection of adapting and growing and being a part of, I mean, a stream or a river or a creek, it'll go where it needs to go without disrupting it. It, it, it, it goes in in harmony with nature around it.

June 14, 2024 w/ JC

Summary (accessible with permission only)
Video (accessible with permission only)
Transcript (accessible with permission only)
Selected Excerpts

It flooded the street. ...the water kept coming into the basement and kind of like, ruined the basement,

...

There was that, the, the pandemic, there's that. And then the third thing was, I wanna say a couple of weeks later, um, there was a tornado, believe it or not.

Oh, you, you mean right after the main break, water main break, there was a tornado <laugh>. Yeah. Well, of course, all the bad things happen all at once.

Yeah. It was like this rule of threes thing. Yeah. So by that time we were just like, okay, next thing

<laugh> waiting for the next thing to happen. Yeah. Yeah. But was it, was it the last one

That Yeah, pretty much. That's good. That was it. Um, but so the, the interesting thing was, you know, during the flooding. Our basement's flooded and, um, we're trying to take all the stuff that's on the floor of the basement. And take it outside, put it on the, the ground, dry it, open up the storm doors. Yeah. And just haul it all over there. Yeah. But you couldn't save everything, obviously. Yeah. Anybody who's been in flood like that knows that, that feeling. And, um, how I was thinking about it this morning was, whose past is this? You know, whose future is this? That I am trying to, trying to save.