BY LAUREN MATTHEW
Staff Writer
OLD BRIDGE — When it rains on Orchard Drive, it pours.
Rain, for 24-year Old Bridge resident Donna Cotugno, has come to mean a flooded lawn. The problem, she said, can be traced back to roadwork the township completed near her house over the past year.
The curbs were redone, Cotugno said, leaving serious drainage problems behind for her.
“If you saw [my yard] now, you’d see a swimming pool,” she said last Thursday, the day after a heavy shower.
When it rains, Cotugno said, the water takes about a month to fully dry up.
“I can’t live like this,” she said.
The water, she noted, is stagnant. Cotugno fears mosquito infestation if nothing is done. She also worries that if the water is still there in the winter, her yard will freeze.
“You can’t park across the street,” she said. “You’d step in water.”
Because the yard is already flooded, Cotugno said, she and her husband can’t wash their cars or properly water the lawn.
“[The township] did an uneven job,” she said.
Cotugno has been calling the township and leaving messages for Mayor Jim Phillips, though Phillips said he never received Cotugno’s messages.
“I return my messages,” he said.
However, Phillips was aware of the situation on Orchard Drive.
“There is definitely a problem,” he said. “It was definitely exacerbated by the township’s paving.”
The township paved the road near Cotugno’s house about three months ago.
“Whatever we have to do to make this better, we should,” the mayor added.
Phillips said improvements were made to a “T” in the road on Orchard Drive. Water was directed to the front of Cotugno’s house, where there is no catch basin.
“Installing a catch basin could fix it,” Phillips said.
The paving was done to try to fix that problem, he said, but it did not work.
The mayor said he asked Township Business Administrator Michael Jacobs to look at temporary measures to help resolve the problem.
Surveyors from the township took a look at Cotugno’s yard last Thursday.
“The township came already to start [working],” Cotugno said Friday.
“It’s a high priority to make it better,” the mayor said.