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Ferguson: Funds needed for flood project
In Bound Brook, Congressman Mike Ferguson tours the construcition site where important flood control measures are underway.
June 24, 2008
COURIER NEWS ARTICLE
Ferguson: Funds needed for flood project
By MICHAEL DEAK
STAFF WRITER
The long-awaited Green Brook flood control project is making slow, but steady progress.
The current focus of the project supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers is the construction of a new Talmage Avenue bridge over the Middle Brook at the borough's western border with Bridgewater.
The new bridge, which will be six feet higher than the current span, will allow levees to be constructed south along the Middle Brook to the Raritan River. Levees have already been built along the Middle Brook from Tea Street Park north to the Bridgewater border along the stream.
Once those levees are completed, then construction will begin on the project's final phase, levees along the Raritan River.
But the project needs more money and Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-New Providence) said Monday on a tour of the work site, he will work during the remainder of his term to obtain the funds.
Ferguson said he was confident Congress will appropriate at least $10 million for the project, but is working for $20 million.
"We're working with the senators,"' Ferguson said about the state's two senators, Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez.
John O'Connor, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, said he expected the current work to be finished within budget when bids go out this summer.
"There's not a lot of work out there,'" he said.
But first a temporary bridge has to be placed over the Middle Brook so traffic on the busy road connecting Bound Brook to the Commerce Bank Ballpark and the Bridgewater Promenade is not interrupted. The road also serves as an alternate route when traffic on Route 287 is stalled.
The first steps in installing the prefabricated bridge have already been taken. The biggest hurdle, project officials said, was relocating the telephone and gas lines that crossed the Middle Brook on the current span and would be in the way of the temporary span.
Because Talmage Avenue is a county road, Somerset County officials have been cooperative in every stage of the project, Mayor Carey Pilato said.
"It was a good cooperative effort,'" Ferguson said. "That's the way it should be.'"
Approaches for the temporary bridge, which will be upstream from the current bridge, necessitated the demolition of the building that formerly housed Apollo Glass at the corner of Talmage Avenue and Tea Street. The business has moved to Somerville.
Heavy trucks will not be allowed on the temporary bridge.
Project officials expect the temporary bridge to be in place by August.
Then the demolition of the current bridge, which was under water during the April 2007 flood, and has acted as a dam, can begin.
Once that is done, construction on the new bridge will begin. Because it will be six feet higher than the current spa, it will be similar to the East Main Street bridge over the Green Brook between Bound Brook and Middlesex Borough.
That bridge was raised as part of the flood control project that built levees along the Green Brook.
The construction of the new bridge should be completed in about eight months if the weather is good this winter, O'Connor said.
And once the new bridge is finished, the levees can be constructed.
The Green Brook flood control project was the brainchild of the Green Brook Flood Control Commission, which was created in the wake of two devastating floods in the Green Brook and Raritan River basin in 1971 and 1973. Since then Bound Brook has experienced two more devastating floods in 1999 and 2007.
Michael Deak can be
reached at (908) 707-3134 or
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