Leak in Geotube Incites Neighbors, As Dredge Material Drains at Marina

STONE HARBOR – Nerves are frayed at the border of Avalon and Stone Harbor, and it has nothing to do with electric poles.
Stone Harbor has begun its much anticipated dredging of the back bay but the borough’s decision to use the municipal marina land at 80th Street as the dewatering site has neighbors in the area up in arms.
Borough Administrator Jill Gougher said that the borough engineer considered other possible sites for the dewatering facility but none could accommodate the large amounts of material that will be produced during the project.
“We thought of off-loading Site 103,” a containment structure on Nummy Island bought by the borough in 2014, “but it will only hold about 20,000 cubic yards at any one time and that would have extended the length of the project,” she said.
The marina was used as an emergency site for sludge in the past. In 2003, Stone Harbor began a dredging effort that deposited almost 80,000 cubic yards of sediment and spoils from dredging on a remote area overlooking Hereford Inlet at the southern end of the borough.
The Office of the U.S. Attorney, with future Gov. Chris Christie as its head, filed suit and threatened fines of $25,000 a day if the borough did not find another location for the dredging material. The marina was pressed into service.
For some of the residents and homeowners in the marina area, the urgency to get the bay dredged has put what they consider to be a dangerous facility in their back yard.
Donna Strug, an Avalon resident whose property is “60 yards” from the marina parking lot, said the project has created an “industrial wasteland” in her neighborhood. 
She considers the borough actions “reckless and fiscally irresponsible.” Strug said the borough knows that dredging the back bay is a process it will undertake at periodic intervals, yet officials were not proactive.
Instead, she and others in the area feel that the borough scurried to find a solution to satisfy the demands of residents for dredging the back bay as soon as possible. The result, states a post on the Stone Harbor Property Owners Association Facebook page, is subjecting people near the marina to “an unlivable and dangerous environment.”
The project can span three years, according to the agreement with the contractor. 
The borough hopes that the lifting of the winter flounder restriction will allow the contractor to complete the work this year, or at least with work extended to only part of next year. 
The contractor is required to have the marina back in operation by March 31 for the summer. If the work carries over to another year, the dewatering facility will have to be taken down and reconstructed in September 2016.
For Brenda Kamerer, another marina neighbor, the reaction is the same. The borough has “capriciously and irresponsibly placed a hazardous facility right in the middle of a residential neighborhood less than 50 feet from the nearest home,” she argued.  On Dec. 4, Kamerer, Strug and others witnessed what they most feared, a leak from the dewatering facility that discharged water and spoils into a residential street.
The leak was brought under control and the work at the site temporarily stopped while the contractor worked to improve the containment, but the incident, just days after the dredging began, is proof for these property owners of the risks they fear from the project.
A state Department of Environmental Protection inspection of the site following the containment leak resulted in a temporary stop in the dredging operation in order to institute a corrective action plan meant to bring the site back into compliance with the permits associated with the project. 
The incident is being blamed on a partial rip in a geotube at the site. That, again, highlights one of the worries neighbors have about the site.
Flood maps designate the site as an AE-10 area likely to flood in bad weather.
Property owners wonder what will happen if the area, with its geotubes filled with spoils from the bay, experiences a serious storm over the next few months.
When asked, Gougher said that the contractor is required to prepare for such a possibility and she mentioned the reliance on geotubes for containment.
For the property owners, a rip, even a minor one, in a geotube in calm weather is not a good omen as the winter storm season approaches.
Property owners in the area want the “course of the project” changed. Owners on the bay across the borough want the back bay dredged as soon as possible.
The borough regrets the need to use the marina but sees no other alternative that can meet the time and budget demands of the project.
Gougher said that “long-term” the borough will be seeking an alternative to using the marina in this manner.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.