By PETE WALTON
Avon officials have applied for a Green Acres grant to upgrade the borough’s Sylvan Lake shoreline.
An existing grant can cover urgently needed repairs to part of the shoreline, according to Borough Administrator Timothy M. Gallagher.
Barbara Suchecki, Avon’s grant coordinator, says the $842,230 requested from the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program would allow construction of a “living shoreline” along the length of Sylvan Lake in the borough.
A living shoreline would involve removal of the deteriorating wooden bulkhead, replacing it with a natural, gradually sloping shoreline, including “bioswales.”
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, bioswales are landscape elements which concentrate or remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water. Suchecki said that in addition to improving the quality of the water in the lake, the improvements will also deter geese, which Gallagher says prefer to jump into the water off a platform rather than wade through tall grass.
Mayor John B. Magrini said that borough workers would perform much of the demolition and construction, helping to keep costs down.
Letters of support for the project have been received from the Monmouth County Planning Board, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th), and state Assemblymen Sean T. Kean and Dave Rible.
Rible attended this week’s meeting of the Board of Commissioners and answered questions from Magrini about issues concerning the borough. The mayor noted that when he served as a police dispatcher, Rible was a special police officer in Avon.
Also attending the meeting was Bradley Beach Mayor Gary Engelstad, who brought a signed copy of the one-year shared services agreement betweeen the two neighboring boroughs for the use of Avon’s garbage trucks.
Engelstad said that “Avon came to our rescue, literally” when its previous trash contractor sought a 41 percent in fees for 2017.
“The level of cooperation between Avon and Bradley Beach has never been greater,” Engelstad said.
Municipal Attorney Barry A. Cooke said that the borough had closed on the sale of one of the two lots at the site of the former Taylor Memorial Baptist Church on Sylvania Avenue, and expected to close on the other lot this week.
Cooke also reported that minor changes have been made to an easement agreement involving an undersea fiber optic cable connecting Brazil and the United States which comes ashore in the borough at East End Avenue.
The 6,700-mile Seabras-1 cable is linked to Tata Communications’ Cable Landing Station just off Route 35 in Wall.
The builders of the cable initially offered a payment of $48,000 for the easement, according to Gallagher. The amount was renegotiated at the borough’s initiative to $275,000.
Cooke expects Avon to receive payment this week.
