By Mary Walton
Since early January the Ocean Grove Sewerage Authority has used an area bordering the east end of Fletcher Lake to deposit debris from its sewer replacement project along Abbott Avenue.
Concerned residents watched as giant sewer pipes, smaller ones of PVC, chunks of asphalt, clumps of cement, a discarded cement culvert, pallets, plastic wrap and mounds of earth spread along the lake front. There were no trash cans, and litter left by workers added to the mess.
Several residents raised their objections at the recent meeting of the Ocean Grove Home Owners Association, and 10 turned up at a meeting of the Fletcher Lake Commission on Wednesday. Commission chairman Charles Quixley agreed to write a letter reiterating their concerns to both the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which owns the property, and to Neptune Mayor Randy Bishop. Meanwhile, Jeannine Rudolph, who lives nearby on Central Avenue, requested the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to investigate “possible illegal dumping.”
As the protests mounted, the pile shrank temporarily and residents cheered. But then it grew bigger. Finally, late Friday, workers began removing much of the remaining debris. And assurances came from multiple sources that the site would be cleared by Monday, when the Sewerage Authority expects to finish its project.
Rudolph said she received a call Friday from a DEP investigator, who told her the debris was too minor to warrant an investigation but that a Township engineer had told DEP it would be gone by Monday. “They are cleaning it up,” Rudolph said. “That’s the important part.” In a telephone conversation with Blogfinger, a DEP spokesman said there was “no violation.”
On the scene of the clean-up, Tom O’Neill, an inspector for Leon S. Avakian Consulting Engineers, the firm that is overseeing the project, added his pledge that everything would be gone by Monday.
As a team of workers shoveled a shrinking mound of dirt into a neat pile, Broadway residents Connie Ogden and Carol Woidt, who had lobbied for action, emphasized that they had acted out of concern for the environment. “We don’t object to the staging part — the pipes and equipment,” Woidt said, “but we do object to dumping.”
“We were very concerned because we didn’t know what was in it,” Ogden said of the debris, “and it was directly on the ground and very close to the lake.” With a Broadway drainage project set to begin shortly, she added, “We’d like this to be a precedent for not dumping unknown debris and dirt on the ground close to the lake. It’s purely an environmental concern.”
Here's how the site looked on Thursday
On Friday workers were cleaning it up. Photos by Mary Walton