By Charles Layton
The Neptune Township Committee authorized an additional $118,237 on Monday night for the Broadway drainage project, and officials predicted that residents will see a major improvement once the project is completed.
Engineering consultant Peter Avakian told the Township Committee that the drainage project “was not designed as a flood control project.” However, he said that although preventing all floods in that low-lying area was practically impossible, “I still believe that when the project is complete you’ll get a tremendous benefit out of it.”
What the new system of drainage pipes, grates and outlets cannot prevent, he said, was flooding in cases of heavy rain during high tidal flow or when the water level in Fletcher Lake is especially high.
A number of Ocean Grovers tried to pin down the Committee as to exactly when the much-delayed and highly-disruptive project would finally be finished. It had originally been expected that the work would be done by the end of June. Now, Mayor Randy Bishop said, the Township is hoping all the work will be done by the end of October. Avakian said it would be done by November 15 “definitely.”
The additional money appropriated by the Committee is to cover several unanticipated changes to the project — chiefly, the replacement of an antiquated culvert that collapsed on August 14.
Leanne Hoffmann, Neptune’s director of engineering and planning, said it was unclear whether the culvert collapsed because of something the contractor might have done at the site, but that it would be hard to prove “in a court of law” that the contractor was to blame.
Many of the Ocean Grovers in the audience told the Committee that the three most recent floods on Broadway were worse than anything they had experienced before, and that this was definitely due to the construction activity.
Bishop and other Committee members refused to agree that the contractor’s actions had produced the worse-than-usual flooding. However, Township officials and residents alike have been critical of the general performance of the contractor, James R. Ientile Inc. of Marlboro. “I’ve never seen anything so sloppy from a contractor in my life,” said resident Allan Ellgren of 55 Broadway.
Hoffmann said the contractor will likely resume work at the site on Thursday or Friday of this week.
The additional money authorized on Monday brings the project’s total contract cost to $1,224,000. Bishop said this new money would be enough to cover all the remaining work, including the final phase, which will be the repaving of the entire length of Broadway.
Here’s the thing: this is a drainage modernization project that is installing pipes and culverts that are appropriately sized to handle the storm water runoff. Projects like installing and fixing the sluice gates on Fletcher Lake so it won’t overflow is a flood control project. We’re trying – desperately – to provide properly-working storm sewers on Broadway so the water doesn’t flood and we can open the Fletcher Lake gate and prevent flooding.
Some of this confusion is technical engineering language vs. normal people language, but the Committee, Engineering and Administration are laser-focused on eliminating the Broadway flooding, and have been since the beginning of this phase of work. Don’t let semantics discourage you; we’re going to fix this, no matter what it takes, and as quickly as we can.
“was not designed as a flood control project.”
Why would the town design this project not to control the floods that keep happening? It sounds like they intentionally set out to only do part of the job. Seems to me that if you are going to do all that they are, they could have done a little more. The town owes this to the long suffering residents on Broadway.
The residents should try to understand that drainage pipes are not flood control systems, they are for chipmunks, and for continual clearing for Township workers. They should also understand that the Main Street drain to the sea was not necessary and could be closed and not re-opened as part of the project because the water could be handled by the chipmunk community centers. They should also understand that the system cannot be fairly evaluated until the project is over and the contractor is gone. The chipmunks will still be there to burrow some holes.