Wallisch area flooding is the worst residents can remember West Milford - They hadn't seen anything like Irene. Ever. And the hope of many residents of Madelyn Avenue in West Milford is that they never do again. Some of the longtime homeowners on this quiet block not far from the center of town feel it wasn't just Hurricane Irene that dumped a torrent of water on their neigborhood, flooding not just their yards and basements but their homes and garages too. "It's never, ever, ever done that before," said Cynthia Klukoski, a 15-year resident of Madelyn Ave. "At 5:30, there was no water out in front of my house. By 7 a.m., it was up to the top of my porch steps." Klukoski and some of her neighbors believe it wasn't just the hurricane that devastated their neighborhood. They feel a partially opened sluice pipe at the Pinecliff Lake dam helped to flood their neighborhood. "It would have never come up that fast on its own," said Klukoski. Debbie McGovern agrees. McGovern and her family have lived by the creek for 17 years. They've seen flooding, but nothing like this. "The water came up 19 inches in my home," said McGovern whose entire first floor was ravaged by the flood waters. Four feet of the sheetrock had to be cut off from around the first floor rooms and disposed of to stop the mold from spreading. Carpeting and flooring is completely pulled up and gone. There is a water line halfway up her stainless steel dishwasher. "In 17 years I've never had water in the house except during Floyd, and then we had six inches over the course of three and a half days of rain." McGovern, too, said the water was still in the streets by 5:30 on the morning of Aug. 28. Within one hour, it was trickling into her home. By 7:30, when the fire department was rescuing her family and many others on the block by boat, the water was waist high. She feels the surge of water came from more than Mother Nature. She, Klukoski and other neighbors heard from a resident of Pinecliff Lake, which is upstream from their neighborhood, that Pinecliff opened the dam and released water down into the Belchers Creek and possibly their neighborhood. "We were told they opened the dam," said a 33-year resident who did not wish to be identified. That wasn't the case, according to Ed Spirko, acting president of the Pinecliff Lake Homeowners Association and a member of the Pinecliff dam committee. Pinecliff speaks out "Pinecliff Lake was not lowered," Spirko said. "That is just wrong." What did happen, Spirko said, is that a 24-inch sluice pipe was opened up 30 percent the day before the storm and closed the day after. "The water was 1.7 feet above the top of the spillway," said Spirko. "That spillway couldn't move the water fast enough. Opening the pipe had a negligible effect on the neighborhood." Usually, Spirko said, the water is an inch above the spillway, if that. But he estimated with 12 inches of water in about 12 hours, the water simply couldn't move quick enough. Spirko said the state Department of Dam Safety encouraged communities to lower their lake levels in anticipation of the hurricane but Pinecliff didn't do that. If they did decide to lower the level, they would have needed a permit, he added. They do open the sluice pipe every year at the end of the summer, usually in late September or early October. Spirko explained that the water in Belchers Creek overflows not from the flow coming from above but more from when Greenwood Lake backs up. "If Greenwood Lake rises, the whole of Belchers Creek rises," said Spirko. "If water is high in Belchers Creek, it's because Greenwood Lake is high. " Spirko said he'd be happy to meet with the residents of the Wallisch area to discuss what was done and explain the physics of it all. And, he said, he was very grateful for the investment Pinecliff Lake residents made in rebuilding the dam in 2003. "The thing we should be happy about is that the Pinecliff Dam was able to hold during such a big storm," Spirko said. "This was the biggest test yet. They should be happy about that." Gratitude isn't exactly the feeling residents on Madelyn have right now. Of course McGovern, Klukoski and other longtime residents are grateful no one was injured, but some lost everything they have. A young family had just moved into one of the houses on the block and lost everything they own, McGovern said. They were taken by boat with their one-week-old baby. Much of their furniture, as well as the possessions of many others, still sits outside waiting for pickup. And that's another issue. Klukoski said the trash collectors are leaving regular garbage out there and refusing to take it. "It's not garbage from the flood," she insisted. "It's regular garbage and they are not taking it. It's been sitting there for three weeks." They've had to rebag the garbage several times, she said, because of the bears. "It's just not right," said Klukoski. "We work hard. We pay our taxes." Are you still struggling from the recent storms? Go to www.westmilfordmessenger.com and add your comments to this story.