Construction workers are using heavy machinery to install the drainage pipes on Central Avenue.
The stretch of Central Avenue between 43rd and 46th streets in Sea Isle City is awfully congested these days.
Not with cars and trucks – but with detour signs, heavy construction machinery, large drainage pipes and workers in hard hats.
The drainage work is the first phase of a stormwater pumping station that will ultimately protect the flood-prone neighborhoods surrounding Sea Isle’s new $21 million community recreation center.
An underground piping system along Central Avenue and 46th Street will channel stormwater to the pumping station.
Motorists are greeted with detours on Central Avenue between 43rd and 46th streets during construction.The pumping station will protect the area from Park Road to Landis Avenue between 43rd and 47th streets, all the way to the bay.
Sea Isle will award a contract in the future for construction of the pumping station itself. City Business Administrator George Savastano estimated the entire cost of the project at between $2 million and $3 million once all of the contracts are awarded.
Savastano explained that the city wants to see how the new $881,000 drainage system, under construction now on Central Avenue, will work before moving ahead with the pumping station.
He said the drainage work should be completed by “next month or so.”
Last August, a roomful of homeowners attended a City Council meeting to complain about the original proposed location for the pumping station’s outfall pump. It was supposed to dump stormwater into a quaint lagoon at 46th Place, drawing objections from the homeowners.
In response to those complains, Mayor Leonard Desiderio assured the homeowners that the outfall pipe would be redesigned to avoid the 46th Place lagoon.
Desiderio said the city engineer is working on options to discharge the stormwater somewhere else, but not in the lagoons between 45th Place and 47th Place.
“As everyone knows, flood mitigation is one of the priorities of our capital improvement program, and this project will address an area prone to chronic flooding,” Desiderio said in a statement.
The massive drainage pipes are the first phase of a proposed stormwater pumping station that will ultimately protect the surrounding neighborhoods from flooding.Sometime later in the year, probably in the fall, the city will decide where to locate the outfall pipe. A public hearing will be held to discuss the location of the outfall pipe, Savastano said.
In the meantime, motorists will have to follow detours off Central Avenue to make their way around the drainage construction for the pumping station.
Pumping stations intercept floodwater and channel it back into the bay much faster than it would normally take to drain off the streets after a coastal storm. They have proved effective in Ocean City, Avalon and other shore communities vulnerable to flooding.
Sea Isle built its first pumping station in 2019 in the flood-prone area at the bay end of 38th Street and Sounds Avenue.
Altogether, the city is considering 10 areas throughout town that are vulnerable to flooding for pumping stations in the next five to 10 years, Savastano said.
The drainage project is being done near Sea Isle City's new $21 million community center, seen in the background.
