SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Members of the South Orange Board of Trustees’ Public Works and Infrastructure Committee told the News-Record that they hope next year to completely repave and install new curbing on the section of Lenox Avenue that New Jersey American Water dug up to lay its water supply line.
Trustees Walter Clarke, chairman of the committee, and Howard Levison, a representative to the committee, both made this intention clear after several residents complained during the BOT’s Aug. 8 meeting that the Lenox Avenue roadway from South Ridgewood Road to Wyoming Avenue looks bad and has needed new curbing for decades. Originally, NJAW was supposed to mill and repave the areas of that street it had torn up. But, after recognizing the issue, Clarke said the township had instead decided to have the water company repave the upper and lower sections of the street so that South Orange could do the promised total upgrade of the middle section next spring.
Still, Clarke acknowledged that there is no guarantee that portion of Lenox Avenue will be fixed up in 2017. The timing could be affected by the results of water leakage tests recently conducted around town, he said. And though South Orange has not yet received the complete findings of those tests, Clarke said he had been notified that a few leaks were found in that stretch of Lenox Avenue. This means the township would hold off on repaving the road in case the village needs to dig back into the road to repair the leaks, he said.
“We’ve made a mess, and we want to completely fix everything we can before we finish cleaning up that mess,” Clarke, a Lenox Avenue resident himself, told the News-Record in an Aug. 19 phone interview. “Unfortunately, that means waiting a while longer.”
That might be frustrating for residents to hear, but Levison stressed that it is important to repair the leaks because South Orange will otherwise continue paying for water that is not being used. After comparing the amount that the East Orange Water Commission billed the town to the amount of water used in the past year or two, the trustee said the township discovered that it lost 40 to 50 percent of the water for which it was charged. That is unacceptable, he said, considering that municipalities typically lose only 10 to 15 percent of their water. Fixing the few leaks along Lenox Avenue alone will save 10 percent of the water being lost, he said.
But the leakages are not the only issue that could potentially hold up Lenox Avenue getting new pavement and curbs. Levison said television cameras also were recently run through the sewers in order to seek out any problems that might be afflicting the 100-year-old system, such as pipe deterioration. He said some issues were found in that section of Lenox Avenue and will need to be corrected, so redoing the road now is a waste of money, as it will just need to be torn up again in the near future.
All the village’s leakage and sewer repairs will next be prioritized to determine in which order they should be completed, according to Clarke. He said that decision will be made after analyzing such factors as the size of a leak, the best method to repair each leak and whether a cluster of leaks is in proximity to the equipment needed to fix them. In other words, the issues on Lenox Avenue might not be resolved immediately.
Even if the repairs are made in short order, Lenox Avenue still might not get its expected repaving and new curbs right away. Clarke explained that all such road projects are prioritized after the winter so the streets that are badly in need of repair get the attention they require. He added that other factors affecting priority include the amount of traffic that uses the road and the size of the street.
Yet Clarke hopes that the Lenox Avenue repaving and new curbing is made a high priority of the village considering the work that has already been done there.
“In this case, you have what I would call an ‘opportunity factor,’” Clarke said. “We’ve had to open up the street and tear up pretty much the entire length of Lenox Avenue for this pipeline. That should cause a reprioritization of that.”
Village engineer Salvatore Renda and public works director Tom Michetti did not respond to requests for comment before press time Aug. 23.
Mike Davis certainly wants Lenox Avenue to be labeled as a high priority. The 26-year resident said he is fed up with the condition of the area curbing, which he described as an “abomination” of cracked or entirely missing sections that hurt the otherwise beautiful neighborhood. While other streets in better condition have been repaved with corresponding curbing put in, he said his area has never been upgraded by the village in all the decades he has lived there. And he said the road — which now has a serpentine, concrete-filled trench running through where the water line was placed — looks like an “atrocity.”
Davis is so upset that he even collected the signatures of nearly everyone on his block for a petition expressing dissatisfaction with the roadwork, which he presented to the board at the Aug. 8 meeting. While the board assured residents then that the street would eventually be repaved with new curbing put in, Davis said he is not confident the village will follow through. He said it does not seem to him that anyone from the municipality has a firm handle on the situation, which is how it has gotten to this point. And the residents who pay high taxes are the ones to suffer, he said.
“There just doesn’t seem to be any direction,” Davis told the News-Record in an Aug. 19 phone interview, questioning why the village would have the upper and lower sections of Lenox Avenue repaved but not his area. “Nothing makes sense. We’re not trying to make a big issue here, but we feel like we’ve waited long enough. And now with the disruption with the water main, it’s time. It’s just time, period.”
Fellow resident Joe Weiler agreed that the road and curbing where they live looks “third-world.” And he also does not understand why certain streets have received new paving and curbs when the middle portion of Lenox looks much worse. At the same time though, Weiler said he is pleased that the trustees seemed to understand at the Aug. 8 meeting that the area must be upgraded. He said he is willing to take his chances that the project will be done next year if it means not having to tear up new pavement to do repairs.
Weiler just said he hopes South Orange will better communicate with residents what it is planning to do moving forward, recalling that he was woken up at 7 a.m. by the water line construction because he received no notice that work was starting. He said he would like to see the village work cooperatively with residents to bring about these improvements because many community members might not have the time to keep track of what municipal government is doing on its own. Regardless, he said he plans to stay on top of the situation just as he does for his other local concerns.
“It’s just one of those things where you have to call them back, you have to email them, you have to be at their meetings, you have to speak,” Weiler told the News-Record in an Aug. 22 phone interview. “Without that, nothing is going to happen.”
As a Lenox Avenue resident, Clarke can sympathize with his neighbors’ frustrations — he said living in a construction zone for a year was not an enjoyable experience. But he said he knows that the work was necessary for South Orange. And while everyone would like to have their streets repaved and their curbs redone, he pointed out that the village only has limited financial resources to get things done. Plus, he said there are a lot of less-visible infrastructure projects that need to be completed just as badly, such as leakage repairs.
Levison agreed that not every road or curb can be addressed as the village only spends approximately $2 million on roadways per year. As for why the middle area of Lenox Avenue has not been upgraded, the trustee explained that the road was never judged to be in bad enough condition to warrant it. The village only installs new curbing when it repaves a street.
The trustee did acknowledge that many of the concrete curbs throughout South Orange are breaking apart with age, adding that the curbs near his own house could use repair. But replacing all of them is simply not possible, he said.
“You need to balance your capital expenditures,” Levison told the News-Record in an Aug. 19 phone interview.
Meanwhile, Levison said that the preparation to switch the village’s water supplier from the EOWC to NJAW is on track for the Jan. 1, 2017, turnover date.
Photos Courtesy of Joe Weiler