Utility wiring can’t be run underground
Streets project to go forward despite setback
BY SUE M. MORGAN
Staff Writer

SUE MORGAN staff Sea Bright officials are hoping telephone, electric and cable wiring can be run underground in one neighborhood, so that utility poles supporting multiple lines, such as this one outside the former firehouse on New Street, can be eliminated.

SEA BRIGHT — Those unsightly overhead utility wires strung over five centrally located side streets are here to stay for now.

Nonetheless, council President Maria Fernandes remains eager to move ahead with the planned aesthetic and quality-of-life improvements to the flood-prone neighborhood, which also include construction of new sanitary sewers outside 68 properties, enlargement of existing stormwater drains, two new bulkheads, repaving the road surfaces, and installation of a central pumping station.

Like many of those who own properties along Center, New, Surf, Beech and West Front streets, Fernandes had hoped that re-routing the telephone, electrical and cable lines underground could be part of the overall repairs and enhancements known collectively as the Downtown Infrastructure Improvement Project, (DIIP).

However, engineers from each of the three utility companies, Verizon, Comcast Cable and Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) shot down the idea because many of the residential properties lack adequate frontages to allow the metal boxes which utility workers use to access the lines and because of the constant flooding on the streets, Fernandes reported at the Borough Council’s July 19 meeting.

That news came out of a June 30 meeting where Fernandes, joined by Borough Engineer David Hoder and consulting engineer Peter Avakian, presented to the utility company engineers a proposal to run the lines underground.

To run the wires underground, metal utility boxes would have to be placed in selected front residential yards at certain intervals, Fernandes reported.

The utility company engineers expressed doubt that those metal boxes could be built to be watertight especially when flooding occurs in the neighborhood, which sits along the Shrewsbury River, she continued.

“The flooding is a problem,” said Fernandes, who also chairs the council’s Public Works Committee. “The boxes might not be watertight.”

Some of the newer homes constructed on the side streets have been raised from the ground and set back farther from the roadway. Those might someday be candidates for placement of the utility boxes, Fernandes acknowledged.

The issue would then be deciding which homes would get the utility boxes in their front yards, she added.

Mayor Jo-Ann Kalaka-Adams urged Fernandes and committee members, Councilmen Clark Craig and Brian Kelly, not to give up on persuading the utilities to bury the lines.

If the new pumping station, larger drain pipes, bulkheading. and other work covered by the DIIP program helps to alleviate the flooding that results from heavy rains and full moons proves successful, the utility companies might be more amenable to rerouting the lines, Kalaka-Adams pointed out.

In addition, the borough’s Planning and Zoning Board of Adjustment could require any new construction on the streets to have adequate frontage to hold one of the metal utility boxes, she suggested.

“We have to look at the future and see what they say,” Kalaka-Adams said. “Maybe at that time we’ll have [the flooding] under control.”

The five targeted streets also sit adjacent to Sea Bright’s main business district and can be accessed from Ocean Avenue.

During a June 18 community workshop on revitalizing Sea Bright’s downtown, property owners from the five streets, obviously put off by the ugliness of the multiple lines and transformers strung between utility poles in their neighborhood, pressed borough officials to try to reroute the lines underground.

Kelly, who resides in the neighborhood as well, believes the town should persist in its endeavor to bury the lines.

“We came up against two hurdles we didn’t expect early in the process,” the first-term councilman said. “We’re not going to give up.”

With two new bulkheads also planned for the area under the DIIP program, Fernandes contacted the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and officials in several other waterfront towns in the state about uniform standards for constructing and maintaining the walls.

While neither the DEP nor any of the other communities would commit to certain types of material for bulkheading, the Army Corps recommended steel, Fernandes said.

All of the entities, which included Dover Township, Lacey Township, Tuckerton, and the City of Wildwood, recommended that the individual municipality do its own engineering and design, she continued.

Though some municipalities charge for building permits for bulkhead construction, in most cases, the DEP handles that end of the business, she noted.

Should Sea Bright proceed with adopting standards for construction of bulkheads, officials might want to delegate the issuance of permits to the state, she suggested.

“We thought we should leave that part to the DEP and not put too much red tape on the borough,” she said.

A public discussion on the details of the entire DIIP program is scheduled during the council’s Aug. 16 meeting in borough hall at 7 p.m.

At that time, Hoder and Avakian, of the Neptune Township-based engineering firm of Leon S. Avakian, are expected to explain the particulars of the DIIP project and address any questions from property owners in the five-street neighborhood on matters such as shut-offs and road closures, Fernandes said.

A representative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency studying the flooding program, is also expected to be on hand, she noted.

The sanitary sewer program is set to begin in September under a $300,000 bond ordinance unanimously adopted by the council earlier this month.