Old AT and T Poles Near Good Luck Point To Come Down Soon

The wooden poles that dot the tidal marshlands off Good Luck Point in Bayville have been a familiar yet strange sight to many since the late 1920s.

Once they were part of state-of-the art ship-to-shore transmitting station. The acres of marshlands are now part of the Edwin F. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge, home to egrets, ospreys herons and even bald eagles.

But decades ago, the poles, lofty metal antennas and wires and the brick transmitter building were a major, state-of-the-art communications center on the Jersey Shore. The facilities were a high-frequency, shortwave radio transmitting station providing telephone high-seas service to ships at seas and to overseas locations under the call sign WOO, according to www.long-lines.net.

The death knell for the Good Luck Point station was a result of additional undersea cables laid between Europe and North America and satellite communications, the article states.

The poles, brick building and the rusting rhombic antennas haven't been used for decades.They have weathered Superstorm Sandy, blizzards and floods.

The USFWS's contractor - Amec Foster Wheeler - will be at the sites in Bayville and Manahawkin today, Tuesday and Wednesday along with a subcontractor to do a "test drop," according to a letter from Charles R. Harma, branch manager of Amec Foster Wheeler to Mayor Carmen F. Amato Jr.

"We are going to be taking down a few of the poles in easily accessible areas of Good Luck Point to test logistics, procedures and approaches," he said. "We will be mobilizing on Monday, will be cutting on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, and will leave Wednesday afternoon. Our full construction action will probably occur in January of 2017."

The work will be done at no cost to the township, the mayor said.

The brick building that once housed the equipment needed for the station is another story. It stands only 18 inches above sea level and was swamped by Superstorm Sandy.

Berkeley has applied for Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP) funding to help with demolition costs, Amato said.

"We would then turn that area into a small parking lot and observation area, with benches," he said. "This would be the best use. The building needs to come down."

The building has been vandalized numerous times and the metal and copper wiring was stolen, the mayor said.

"In an effort to stop the building from being vandalized, the power was cut and the building was boarded up sometime in 2010," Amato said. "The interior of the building and basement is in disrepair. Of course Superstorm Sandy exacerbated it."

by Patricia A. Miller

Images: Patricia A. Miller