The 65-year-old Metuchen Pumping Station has a pump that’s out for repair, so it’s serving 1,200 Edison homes and 200 Metuchen homes on an auxiliary pump. The 40-year-old Tingley Lane Pumping Station has an auxiliary bypass system to temporarily substitute pumps with broken valves that need to be repaired to make sure nearly one million gallons of water a day flows efficiently. If it collapses, the damage will create a public health and environmental risk, Waldron said. The columns that hold up a large part of the 45-year-old infrastructure within the West Side Pumping Station, one of the township’s two main stations, is crumbling. If the township made its own sewer and water authority, it would just cost too much money for the township to do so.”īusted and leaking pipes are just two of the problems the township has needed to address.
There’s just no way we can keep up with this.
We don’t have the equipment to do an undertaking of the problems that the sewer is posing to us, like pump stations breaking down, pipes bursting or falling apart. “I have a staff of eight people,” he said. Mayor Thomas Lankey has said the more than $500 million needed to staff and resource a township utilities authority and make necessary repairs would raise rates by 90 percent and destroy the township’s credit rating.Ī township sewer employee for 43 years, Waldron agreed. SEE ALSO: Edison residents seek 4,000 signatures to put sewer issue on the ballot More than half of the 4,000 signatures required to be submitted to the township clerk by June 1 have been collected, according to organizers. Township residents opposed to the deal are circulating a petition to place a referendum on the ballot that would call for the township to create its own utilities authority. The deal would raise rates 4 to 5 percent annually, yet retain the township's senior freeze on rates, according to the 763-page agreement at /revize/townshipofedison/watersewer/index.php. One is an $851 million, 40-year deal with Suez North American, which would provide $481 million in infrastructure investment and $370 million in concession fees, including $105 million up front, which would finance other infrastructure repairs, such as township buildings and roads. SEE ALSO: Edison mayor discusses $851M Suez sewer dealĪfter what authorities have said is 25 years of neglect, two options have been laid before residents to fix the sewers. Kocsik, a senior vice president with Mott Macdonald, an engineering consultant that created a study of the township’s crumbling sewer infrastructure.
The cost is in addition to about $2 million the township "wastes" annually by paying the Middlesex County Utilities Authority to process clean water that the sewers leak into the wastewater system, said Peter E. Waldron, supervisor of the township sewer utility. Watch Video: A tour of Edison's crumbling sewersĮDISON - A North Edison wastewater pipe that backed up into the homes of a nearby development has been repaired and is symbolic of the need to address the crumbling and controversial infrastructure as soon as possible, authorities said.Ī 16-inch pipe off Tingley Lane was replaced on Friday at a cost to the township of $200,000, $75,000 more than estimated, said Michael W.