LITTLE FALLS - The township council wants help reducing flooding and so they are asking state and federal legislators for their help in putting gates on the Beatties Dam, something they say would reduce area flooding by eight feet.

The mayor and council are sending letters to Gov. Christie, Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-8th), state Senator Kevin O'Toole, as well as state assemblymen David Russo and Scott Rumana asking for their help. They are doing so in conjunction with passing a resolution asking for their legislators' help.

"It's very frustrating on our end, but we can't fix it," Council President Lou Fontana said at Monday night's council meeting. "We don't have the means to do that. So hopefully this will light a fire under them."

Reading from a letter that will be sent to the representatives Fontana described the problem.

"As a community we have done everything we know how to do. Now we are asking for your help," he said. "There have been endless studies but what we need is action. We desperately need flood gates at the Beatties Dam. We implore you to do everything professionally and legislatively in your power to make the gates a reality."

Mayor Michael DeFrancisci is working on the same problem by trying to get an audience with state Department of Environmental Commissioner Bob Martin, he said.

"We'll keep hitting it from different ends and keep putting as much pressure as we can on anyone who will listen," DeFrancisci said.

The gates they are proposing for the Beatties Dam are bascule gates, or those that open and close like an oven, according to the letter. Those gates are different from the tainter gates on the Pompton Lakes Dam and would not pose the problems that those gates have, the letter states.

"With the gates open, there would be virtually no downstream impact," the letter states. "Therefore, we would expect no negative reaction from our downstream neighbors."

A 1987 study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommended that the dam be rebuilt with bascule gates and in 1988 the state Assembly appropriated $5 million for the project, the letter states. Those funds however were rescinded in 1989 because of a proposed tunnel project that would have brought flood waters to the Newark Bay, according to the letter. That tunnel project however was abandoned.

The resolution and a copy of the letter which asks for help from the legislators will be sent to the town's neighboring Passaic River municipalities asking that they pass similar resolutions and send letters to their state and federal legislators.

Dorothy O'Haire, an officer on the Passaic Valley Regional Flood Board, praised the council's action.

"Today is a great day," she told the council. "You have no idea how much I appreciate this."