Avalon Council Briefed on Electric Project

AVALON – At its Oct. 26 work session, Avalon Borough Council received a presentation by Atlantic City Electric (ACE) concerning the next phase of the Peermont Project. 
The $70-$90 million project was initiated three years ago by ACE and aims to upgrade the level and the reliability of electrical power on Seven Mile Island.
In the first phase of the project, ACE built a new substation at 60th Street here replacing the outdated substations that had serviced the island.
That phase of the effort also brought higher power transmission lines onto the island via a series of new standard, and controversial, steel galvanized poles.
The poles have been a source of ongoing conflict between the utility and a group of residents in Stone Harbor.
With the transmission lines are up and running feeding the operational Peermont substation at 60th Street, ACE is ready to complete its plans for the island with new distribution feeder lines emanating from the substation.
One additional line, the Hereford feeder, will move south from 60th Street and eventually traverse Stone Harbor as far as 95th Street. The other line, the Ocean feeder, will move north and provide service to customers north of 34th Street.
In its presentation, ACE said that the new distribution feeder system Meanwhile, allow for a significant reduction in the frequency and duration of outages.
“It will take reliability to a new level,” the utility’s project leader said when introducing the project to the Stone Harbor Borough Council recently.
The new system still relies on overhead lines and will require upgrading the poles for the feeder system.
In what ACE says will be an almost pole-for-pole replacement, the new feeder system will see a removal of existing “40 to 45-foot poles” with similar wood poles, but these will be 55 feet long.
An added benefit the utility offers to the borough is the free upgrading of street lights on all poles being replaced moving to the increasingly standard LED lighting fixtures.
ACE presenters said that the project design calls for reuse of existing bracing, pole locations, and seamless reconnection of customer distribution wiring.
There will be no costs to customers.
Earlier estimates had the project extending into 2018, but the council was told that ACE expects to complete the entire project in a period from January to the beginning of summer 2017.
Business Administrator Scott Wahl said the borough is already putting information on the project on its website and will keep the information updated throughout the effort.
Beach and Bay
Wahl updated council on both the beach replenishment project and the dredging effort in the back bay.
“The hydraulic beach fill project has taken several turns,” Wahl said. The federally funded effort to replenish the beaches in Avalon and Stone Harbor has been on the books for two years.
Recent storms have significantly depleted the sand in portions of the borough beaches and borough officials consider the replenishment essential before the 2017 summer season.
The problem stems from a claim by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service that existing federal law that federally funded projects for beach replenishment cannot use sand dredged from Hereford Inlet.
Fish and Wildlife had not given any explanation as to why rules apply now that had never applied for similar beach fills in the past when Hereford Inlet sand had been used.
Wahl has called it “arbitrary and capricious” and even told the council that the borough would seek injunctive relief in courts if negotiations did not result in the project moving forward.
The project calls for beach fills in both island boroughs with Avalon using Townsend Inlet for its borrow area and Stone Harbor using Hereford Inlet.
Underscoring the connected nature of the promised replenishment, Wahl said: “If Stone Harbor’s project does not occur, Avalon’s will not occur.”
The winning bidder and the next lowest bidder have both agreed to hold their bids for an extended month to give the borough time to negotiate.
Meanwhile Council member William Burns pressed for a “plan B.”
That alternative option, much less desirable when the beaches are in the shape they are presently in, would involve a continuation of the back passing effort where the borough takes sand from its mid-island southern beaches and moves that sand to the hard-hit northern beaches.
Any use of the back passing process would require modifications to existing beach maintenance permits.
Borough Engineer Thomas Thornton was urged to begin the process of seeking those permit changes. Back passing is something the borough would like to include as a regular permissible process not to replace hydraulic beach replenishments but to potentially extend the period between such expensive efforts.
On dredging, Thornton informed council members that the recent gas tax compromise had reestablished state funding for portions of the channel dredging effort. The project to complete the back bay dredging can resume, he said. The state requires that the contractors involved have their completion dates extended for the length of time that the controversy over the gas tax disrupted state funded projects.
Thornton said the borough would comply and added that if the winter flounder restrictions had not been removed, this state requirement would have pushed the dredging off another year.
“Luckily the contractor can go ahead with the dredging and finish up after January,” he said.
Proposed Flood Damage Prevention Amendments
Council engaged in a discussion of proposed changes to its ordinance dealing with flood damage protection.
The proposed amendments could if approved by Federal Emergency Management Agency and then council, allow for a class of structures and equipment that would be able to be situated “at or above grade” rather than “three-plus base elevation” as they must be now.
The effort is designed to apply to a series of accessory structures and equipment that are separate from the primary dwelling.
The borough is seeking approval for its plans so that its level 5 CRS designation and its related flood insurance premium discount is not jeopardized.
The accessory structures covered by these changes would not be included in the flood insurance coverage, but they would be allowed greater flexibility without impacting the coverage for the primary dwelling.
A draft of the ordinance changes and a full discussion is planned for the Nov. 9 council work session.
It is possible that ordinance changes could be introduced during the council regular business meeting that day.