Gloucester City has Major Infrastructure Problems
Sunday, August 02, 2009
By Bill Cleary
Following Friday’s heavy rainstorm I received several complaints from King Street residents about the deep puddles of water on that street. For those not familiar with Gloucester City King Street is the last street before your reach the Delaware River. This is an ongoing problem that exists not only on King Street but with sections of Broadway both at the north entrance to the city and at the south end, along with Jersey Avenue.
There are plans to build 29 townhouses on King Street on the grounds of the former Coast Guard Base. Hopefully the plans call for fixing the King Street storm drains before any work begins on the construction of the new homes. Can you imagine paying $250,000 or more for a new townhouse then find out you need to get a boat to reach it every time it rains. Maybe some the federal stimulus monies “floating” around could be used not only on fixing this problem on King Street but in other areas of the City as well.
The problem with King Street has existed for 14 years according to residents. That is disgraceful.
Paula Conroy, a resident of the King Street area, writes,
“I'm enclosing this photo of the intersection of Hudson and King Street at around 5pm Friday. My neighbors and I are sick of this! Whenever there's a threat of rain, we have to park in the public lot on King Street because our street floods. Yesterday was one of the worst. It was over the top step to my Mill House on Hudson. The real problem comes when people insist on riding through this mess! It creates large wakes, and makes even more of a mess on our street. I feel bad for my neighbor in the end house on King. The waves from vehicles going through this caused the windows in his crawlspace to blow in, and it completely flooded!
“ I had called the police right around 5pm and asked to have them block the intersection. It took them almost half an hour to do that! Evidently a few of my neighbors had done the same thing. One car did break down in the water and had to be pushed out. But my real concern is the damage that is done, or could be done, to our homes and vehicles because the storm drains are ancient and inefficient! Since this intersection is at the low point in the city, and the waters from town drain down to the river, we always get severe flooding when we get a flash storm. After 14 years of this, we've had enough!”
The photo of the flooding at Broadway and Market Street was taken by PHOTO by Caleigh Pittman related link Great Photos