The department has no plans to fund a half-mile long barrier along the section of highway bordering the Long Acres neighborhood.
By: Lea Kahn
The on-again, off-again noise barrier for the Long Acres neighborhood, which borders Interstate Highway 95, is off again, according to state Department of Transportation officials.
The DOT has no plans to fund a half-mile-long noise barrier along the section of the highway bordering the Long Acres neighborhood, said agency spokesman Michael Horan. The Long Acres neighborhood is located at the rear of the Lawrence Township municipal complex.
But the DOT is moving ahead with plans to build a noise barrier along I-295 in Hamilton Township, Mr. Horan said. The noise wall would be built on both sides of the road, between Klockner Road and the East State Street Extension, he said.
That move has infuriated Long Acres resident Buz Donnelly, who has been leading the charge for a noise barrier since 1989. His West Church Road home borders I-95/295.
Mr. Donnelly, who is a real estate agent, learned of the plan to build a noise barrier in Hamilton while he was reviewing information on a house for sale in that township.
"I looked at a listing sheet on a house in Hamilton," Mr. Donnelly said. The last sentence of the description (of the property) said that a new sound barrier was going to be built this year."
Mr. Donnelly called the real estate agent who listed the house. He said the agent showed him a letter from a Hamilton Township Council member that referred to the noise wall. Attached to that letter was a letter from Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, whose district includes Hamilton. The assemblywoman’s letter also confirmed plans for the noise barrier.
Several times over the past 12 years, Lawrence Township has been told that a noise barrier would be built along that stretch of the highway, Mr. Donnelly said. But the DOT has never fulfilled that promise, he said.
In the early 1990s, Lawrence was included with Hamilton Township in the Lawrence-Hamilton corridor, Mr. Donnelly said. The DOT’s plan was to build sound barriers in three highway corridors per year but it never happened, he said.
Then, in 1999, the DOT said it would build a noise barrier if Lawrence Township officials would contribute toward the cost of that wall estimated at $900,000. The DOT would have paid $700,000 in state funds and the township would have paid $200,000.
The following year, the DOT began to use federal money to pay for the noise barriers. Along with the federal money, however, came changes in the regulations dealing with noise barriers. The new rules barred municipalities from contributing money toward the noise barriers.
"Every time they say ‘yes,’ the rules change," Mr. Donnelly said. "When they break ground on the sound barrier in Hamilton, every resident in Lawrence Township should be upset."
Mr. Horan said the decision to drop Lawrence from the list for a noise barrier was made on the basis of a recent DOT study. It was determined that based on federal guidelines, it would not be cost effective to build a noise barrier in the Long Acres neighborhood, he said.
Mr. Horan said there are 163 houses that would be affected by a noise barrier in Hamilton, as compared to 8 houses in the Long Acres neighborhood. It is not cost effective to build a noise barrier in Lawrence, he said.
And the cost of constructing a noise barrier has increased in the last few years, Mr. Horan said. The DOT has estimated the current cost of building a noise barrier at $5.7 million per mile, as compared to $2 million within the last few years, he said.

