The council has agreed to ask Environmental Protection Agency representatives to meet with township officials to advise them in regard to the recreation and park area in Roebling Village.
by Amy Batista, Special Writer
FLORENCE — The council has agreed to ask Environmental Protection Agency representatives to meet with township officials to advise them in regard to the recreation and park area in Roebling Village.
”We’ll need to prepare a letter (to) the EPA and tell them this is what we would like to do,” Mayor Craig Wilkie said at the Township Council meeting on Nov. 6.
”They’ve given us a deadline of the middle of November to tell them where we would like to go,” Mayor Wilkie added. “We hope they agree with us. They have assured us that the project will be completed by next fall.”
Not much has changed on the site since August, said Tamara Rossi, EPA project manager, in an email Nov. 12.
”We are progressing with grading and installation of the 2-foot soil cover,” Ms. Rossi said. “The only thing I am aware of is the township will provide their preferences on the fencing around the perimeter of the site.”
The cleanup of the site is a federally funded project, and the estimated cost is $80 million. The dredging started in July 2010 and was completed in June 2013.
The construction project includes dredging approximately 240,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments, stabilization of contaminated soil along the shoreline and capping approximately 34 acres of the site that will be available as a passive recreational park.
According to Mayor Wilkie, after many years, residents will finally have access to the park.
”It will be a nice area that is accessible to the river for the community again,” he said.
Improvements include a looping walking path.
The discussion on the table for the evening was the whether to have a fence.
”This is the fence right now if you were to look at the fence from Riverside Avenue that the EPA put up in 1997/1998 and then a few years later turnaround and put up an extension so that you couldn’t go down the hill,” said Mayor Craig Wilkie.
The EPA is at the “capping stages of the slag area” from Second Avenue to Tenth Avenue will be “turned over to the community,” he said.
”You can see now how high it has come up whereas before you had a big slope going through and the current plans has that fence in essence staying where it is and the trees are there would be staying and then you may not realize that there is a drainage pipe that runs along ten feet, twenty feet, when you get to the bottom of the hill if you got out a little bit you have a mound going up because that is where the drainage pipe is going through and it is part of the cleaning process,” Mayor Wilkie said.
He further noted that the water goes into the drainage pipe along Tenth Ave and through the plants, which act as a natural filter before going into the river.
If the fence remained, it was going to be a “major issue.”
”When we walked the site we were now seeing what we could see as a major issue,” Mayor Wilkie said. “We were going to have this fence we were going to have to maintain. These trees that were on a steep hill and then coming back up we are not going to have the ability to get in there to clean it up to maintain that facility.”
According to Mayor Wilkie, the recommendation is not to put a fence up after meeting over the last month and a half with the Recreation Committee and Police Department.
”The trees are going to die eventually because of the way the slope is so that it’s more of a gradual slope so when you’re coming off of the main part of the park you’ll gradually go over to where that drainage pipe is and then slope on down,” Mayor Wilkie said adding it will not be a dangerous fall compared to before where it was much more steeper.
”That’s the direction I believe we’re going,” he added.

