The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Map courtesy of Somerset County Parks.
A pond dredging project at Colonial Park ended up costing about $300,000 less than anticipated.
The Somerset County Freeholders at their Oct. 8 meeting are expected to authorize the final payment to Netcong-based Salmon Brothers for dredging and dam repair at Duck and Mettler’s ponds.
The final cost will be $892,489.91, which is $307,470.09 less than what had been budgeted.
The reason for the decrease was that there was not as much contaminated sediment that had to be removed as originally estimated, county engineer Matt Loper said in an email.
“In preparation for the dredging project, the accumulated sediment at the bottom of the pond was probed and sampled to determine the approximate volume to be dredged and the characteristics of the spoil material,” he said in the email. “Once the impacted sediment was removed from the pond, it had to be removed to a properly licensed facility for disposal. Therefore, an estimate of the volume of impacted sediment was prepared and the estimated cost to dispose of the volume of sediment was included in the project budget.”
“The original impacted sediment volume was conservatively estimated to insure that sufficient funding was available once dredging commenced,” Loper said. “However, because the actual dredged volume of impacted sediment was less than originally estimated impact levels were lower than anticipated, the cost to dispose of the impacted sediment was also less than the original estimate.”
Loper said the silt was contaminated with what one would normally expect to find in silt from road runoff: “heavy oil compounds, pesticides, etc.”
“These compounds are considered by (the state Department of Environmental Protection) to represent a concern if prolonged direct contact exposure occurs, such as possible in a residential scenario,” he said. “Since sediments were located at the base of the pond, prolonged direct contact was not a concern. The impacted sediment has been removed and transported offsite, eliminating any further concern.”
