USA: Avalon’s Dredging Plan Moves Forward

The Bor­ough of Avalon has obtained state per­mits it needs to move for­ward with an inno­v­a­tive dredg­ing project that is sched­uled to begin this fall with the first-ever munic­i­pal offload of a major New Jer­sey con­fined dis­posal facil­ity (CDF) that will make room for future dredged mate­ri­als.

Avalon also con­ducted a for­mal bid open­ing on Fri­day, August 23rd; at the Wednes­day, August 28th meet­ing of the Avalon Bor­ough Coun­cil, Coun­cil unan­i­mously voted to award the con­tract to South State Inc., of Bridgeton NJ to remove dredge mate­ri­als from the CDF. South State’s bid was $3.8 million.

“This offload of dredged mate­ri­als from Avalon’s CDF at Graven’s Island is the first of its kind in the State of New Jer­sey ”, said Avalon Mayor Mar­tin Pagli­ughi . “Avalon has received the nec­es­sary per­mits to remove dredged mate­ri­als from that loca­tion in advance of an upcom­ing dredg­ing project that will restore safety and nav­i­ga­tion in essen­tial bay­side water­ways and channels”.

Bor­ough offi­cials are now in receipt of per­mits from the New Jer­sey Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion that will allow for the con­struc­tion of a tem­po­rary road from Avalon Boule­vard to the Graven’s Island CDF. A fed­eral per­mit may be deliv­ered to the Bor­ough before the week­end. The tem­po­rary road will allow the con­trac­tor to remove dredged mate­ri­als from the site to an off­shore loca­tion. Approx­i­mately 130,000 cubic yards of dredged mate­ri­als will be offloaded from Graven’s Island to make room for new dredg­ing mate­r­ial that will be dredged and placed on the site. The Bor­ough retains the option of remov­ing an addi­tional 23,000 cubic yards of mate­r­ial at a later date.

“ Essen­tially Avalon is re-using an asset we pur­chased years ago from Mid­dle Town­ship to con­tinue dredg­ing projects when they are needed ”, Mayor Pagli­ughi said. “The removal of this mate­r­ial will allow us to begin an aggres­sive back bay dredg­ing project start­ing in late 2014”.

The Bor­ough of Avalon con­tin­ues dis­cus­sions with Mid­dle Town­ship regard­ing a poten­tial part­ner­ship between both com­mu­ni­ties that may result in addi­tional dredg­ing for Avalon Manor. A part­ner­ship with Mid­dle Town­ship would result in reduced dredg­ing costs for both communities.

It is pos­si­ble the con­struc­tion of a tem­po­rary road to the Graven’s Island CDF will begin before the end of Sep­tem­ber. Dredge mate­r­ial would be offloaded from the site from Novem­ber, 2013 through May 2014 with a sea­sonal restric­tion on the work in place until early Sep­tem­ber, 2014. The offload would con­tinue through Decem­ber, 2014 with the dredg­ing project begin­ning some­time in late 2014 and end­ing in 2015.

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Press Release, September 2, 2013