A caved-in sewerage line in July along Meadowlands Parkway sent town officials scrambling, and will revive an agreement with Hartz Mountain Industries to pay for the repair.
Mayor Dennis Elwell said town officials did not know the nature of the cave-in until after excavation had started.
Elwell said the town had feared the cave-in might have been the result the recent resurfacing of the roadway. If so, the town would have had to pay for the repair and then gone to court to seek the money from the original contractor.
"A cave-in of this sort is not unusual," said Town Administrator Anthony Iacono. "The first thing we did was to secure the area for safety reasons. Then we investigated the situation. After all, we just spent a million dollars rebuilding that road and we wanted to see if the damage was covered under the warrantee."
Test borings done by the town engineer as early as 1996 showed inferior building materials under some sections of the road. While this met state standards for industrial parks, roadways serving the general public required a higher standard. Town officials said some parts of the road were built on meadows, causing the road to sag in places. Last year, they brought in a construction company to fix these problems. Town officials said they feared the problem might have been caused by faulty repair work, but further investigation showed that the true cause was a broken sewer line.
The first phase of the evaluation took about 10 days, Iacono said. This included a televised investigation of the lines.
"We called in the town engineer, the gas and water companies; then we hired someone to excavate," Iacono said.
Not until the street was dug up did the town know the nature of the problem, Elwell said.
"We hired someone who brought in a machine and started to excavate, and once the roadway was opened, it was clear this had not been caused by a catch basin or storm water sewer, but by a sanitary sewer," Elwell said. "We immediately called Hartz Mountain."
In 1998, the town of Secaucus took over 11 roads that had originally been constructed by Hartz Mountain to service its industrial areas. This was a result of a court case in which Hartz used a provision in state law to require the town to take the streets over since their use had become primarily public.
Hartz is responsible for sewer lines
Meadowlands Parkway, a two-mile stretch of road connecting Route 3 and the southern sections of Secaucus, was constructed in the 1970s to accommodate truck traffic in and out of warehouses that dominated the area at the time.
But as warehouses turned to outlets and the construction of residential properties such as Harmon Cove and medical facilities such as Meadowlands Hospital began, the use of Meadowlands Parkway changed, opening it up more to public use and resulting in traffic levels never intended at the time of its construction. Potholes became routine, this partly the result of exposure to the elements, partly due to traffic. With the Hackensack River running side by side with the roadway, Meadowlands Parkway has sometimes been under water during especially high tides.
As a result, the town had assumed all responsibility for these roads, including maintenance and repair together with any and all liabilities. This meant that these roads became the town’s problem and any repairs or problems came from the pockets of the taxpayers.
Hartz agreed, however, to remain responsible for the operation, maintenance and repair of underground systems, such as the sewer lines they constructed.
"While the final figures are not yet in, we expect that Hartz will likely pay about 90 percent of the cost of repair," Elwell said.
The repair was estimated at $30,000.
The overall cost was also reduced by the fact that the Secaucus Municipal Utilities Authority had a contract with the firm doing the repairs.
Emergency was declared
Under the agreement, however, the town would be responsible for the surface of the road and storm water repairs. Hartz would pay for repairs to the sanitary sewer system.
"Hartz agreed to pay for the whole thing and to use the contractor we hired," Elwell said, although the official announcement will not be made until the Aug. 28 Town Council meeting.
Some people did question the timing, noting that it took weeks to repair the street.
Elwell said the nature of the emergency required the town to move slowly, yet the matter was taken care of more quickly than would have been if the town had not declared the situation an emergency.
"If we had gone to bid as we would in a normal situation, we would have had to wait 45 to 60 days," Elwell said. "What we did is we got three bids, took the lowest of these, and then moved ahead with the work."
Elwell said of an ordinance passed last year to keep Meadowlands Parkway from becoming a quilt of patches the way it had been in the past, the road will have to be repaved from curb to curb along the area where the cave-in occurred.
"Our ordinance says that it can’t be patched," Elwell said. "So it will be repaved."