By David Cruz
NJ Today
On day four of the Monmouth County water emergency, officials reported some progress in restoring full service while residents are now starting to ask questions about why the collapse happened in the first place.
Replacement pipes from as far away as Alabama were arriving at the site of the bridge collapse all day today. Meanwhile workmen continued the process of replacing the damaged portion of the pipeline and setting up detours for water to flow into the treatment plant in order to restore pressure so that normal service could be restored to everyone, especially the residents of the four towns that still have to boil their water.
“What we’ve done is install two temporary 12-inch lines that are going from our plant around the breakage here and back into a 30-inch line which is them taking water back up to our customers in the Middletown area,” explained Richard Barnes, a spokesman for New Jersey American Water Co., which provides water service to the county’s 600,000 residents.
To look at the wooden bridge along the edge of the Swimming River Reservoir and Water Treatment Plant, you might be like a lot of people in this part of Monmouth County who expressed surprise that it hadn’t fallen down sooner. Water company officials say the bridge took what they called “a glancing blow” from Tropical Storm Irene last summer but recent inspections showed the system was in good condition, although Barnes said the company was days away from starting an upgrade.
“We don’t have answers to how it collapsed right now,” admitted Barnes. “We’ll be looking at that in the days to come. Right now our main concern is making sure that we’re able to stabilize the system, that we’re able to get water to our customers, to keep our residents in water, and to try to get those four towns off the boil water advisory.”
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Those four towns include Aberdeen, Highlands, Holmdel and Middletown. It was in Middletown, in the parking lot of Middletown High School North, where residents were lining up to grab cases of bottled water from volunteers, most of them American Water employees. Some were wondering why it took a collapse for work on the bridge to get started.
“Oh yeah, I mean they should’ve had something done, you know. It’s been 10 months since the hurricane last August,” said Laurie Sutch, of nearby Leonardo. “There’s no reason for it.”
It’s a question township officials say they’re curious about, too. ‘
“Certainly, that’s an infrastructure issue that New Jersey American Water Company has to address at some point,” said Middletown Township Administrator Anthony Mercantante. “The reservoir and the water plant are all private property, and they’re their facilities, and they’re going to have to address how this happened and what they’re going to do in the future to prevent it from happening.”
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that, once again, small town Jersey rallied around neighbors in a time of great need.
“We’ve had people drive through in cars to ask if we needed more volunteers, so apparently the spirit is there for people to help out if they can,” said Bob Busch, whose home in Hazlet was not affected by the collapse. “The people are grateful that we’re here helping them out in this time of need.”
Officials say it will be Independence Day before all Monmouth County residents have the freedom to use their water without restrictions. Answers as to why this bridge collapsed in the first place? That’s going to take a little bit longer.