TROUBLED WATER LINE SET FOR UPGRADE
The replacement of the Shrewsbury Avenue main is to be timed with the replacement of Hubbards Bridge on West Front Street. (Click to enlarge)
Homes and businesses serviced by an antiquated water supply line on Red Bank’s West Side are finally going to get the water pressure they’ve been demanding for years, borough officials say.
A replacement of the existing four-inch main running beneath Shrewsbury Avenue with an eight-incher is on the drawing board and about to get financing.
The completion of the project, however, is months away.
The $1.05 million estimated cost of the project, which will also improve pressure to fire hydrants, is covered by a $1.85 million bond introduced by the borough council last week.
Work is expected to begin by the end of the year, says borough engineer Christine Ballard. The job, she says, will be timed in conjunction with Monmouth County’s plan to replace Hubbards Bridge, connecting Red Bank and the River Plaza section of Middletown, a project not expected to begin until spring 2012 and take two years.
Ballard says Red Bank needs to sync its project in order to take advantage of an offer by the county to repave Shrewsbury Avenue from West Front Street south to Oakland Street as part of the bridge job. Once the repaving is done, a five-year moratorium on non-emergency openings of the pavement starts, she says, so that the two jobs should be done as near in time to one another as possible.
The bond will also pay for the estimated $594,000 cost of relocating a malfunctioning and unsafe-for-repair-workers sanitary sewer pump now located beneath Drs. James Parker Boulevard near Leighton Avenue. It will be moved west, closer to the Navesink River, Ballard said.
Also covered by the bond is a $200,000 sewer main fix on Bodman Place.
A vote on the bonding measure is expected at Monday night’s council meeting.