USA: Bor­ough of Avalon to Present Dredging Project Details on June 21

The Bor­ough of Avalon has sched­uled a com­mu­nity meet­ing on Sat­ur­day, June 21, to dis­cuss an upcom­ing multi-year dredg­ing project in the com­mu­nity. The meet­ing will be held at the Avalon Ele­men­tary School gym­na­sium start­ing at 11:00am.

“This is the largest infra­struc­ture project the Bor­ough has ini­ti­ated since the revi­tal­iza­tion of the Dune Drive busi­ness dis­trict,” said Avalon Mayor Mar­tin Pagli­ughi. “We want to pro­vide as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble for our prop­erty own­ers about the dredg­ing project and how water­front prop­erty own­ers can par­tic­i­pate by hav­ing their pri­vate slips dredged at their expense.”

The pre­sen­ta­tion will begin with open­ing com­ments by Mayor Pagli­ughi. Avalon Munic­i­pal Engi­neer Thomas Thorn­ton from Hatch Mott Mac­Don­ald will make a pre­sen­ta­tion to the pub­lic regard­ing the scope and time­line of the dredg­ing oper­a­tion. Thorn­ton will also dis­cuss the options avail­able to water­front prop­erty own­ers regard­ing the dredg­ing of their pri­vate slips in the scope of the project area.

Avalon is in the process of secur­ing the per­mits needed for the dredg­ing project which is expected to begin after Labor Day week­end, 2014. The dredg­ing project will take at least two years to com­plete and will result in nearly 120,000 cubic yards of mate­r­ial being placed on Graven’s Island, west of Avalon and south of Avalon Boule­vard in Mid­dle Town­ship. The Borough-owned island is cur­rently being offloaded as dredge mate­r­ial is being mechan­i­cally removed in advance of this dredg­ing project. To date, approx­i­mately 60% of the mate­r­ial has already been removed from Graven’s Island.

In Sep­tem­ber, 2014, the actual dredg­ing project will begin. The Bor­ough and the State of New Jer­sey have iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing areas to receive dredg­ing: Por­poise Lagoon, Cornell/Pennsylvania/Princeton Har­bors, Third Avenue Water­way (Avalon Canal), 54th Street Marina, Oler’s/Graven’s Thor­ough­fare (state chan­nel), Long Reach (state chan­nel), Whale Har­bor (state chan­nel), and Ster­back Har­bor (Avalon Manor, Mid­dle Town­ship). The most severely shoaled chan­nels will be dredged in the fall of 2014. Dur­ing this project, approx­i­mately 120,000 cubic yards of mate­r­ial will be dredged out of these chan­nels to a depth of six feet below mean low water.

The Bor­ough intends to enter into two part­ner­ships in order to off­set expenses related to the project. Mayor Pagli­ughi and Avalon Bor­ough Coun­cil have suc­cess­fully secured fund­ing from the State of New Jer­sey to dredge the afore­men­tioned State chan­nels. Fund­ing of approx­i­mately $2 mil­lion is com­ing from the New Jer­sey Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to finance this ini­tia­tive. Mid­dle Town­ship will finance all of the dredg­ing oper­a­tions in Ster­beck Har­bor and assist with defray­ing some of the project’s over­all costs.

[mappress]

Press Release, June 16, 2014