Neighbors Fed Up with Construction Site

The constant rumble of heavy construction equipment through neighborhoods near the 600 block of Maple Ave. have some neighbors up in arms.

An open-space lot there has been transformed into a staging area for underground utility work in the area. That has led to caravans of heavy equipment moving through the formally quiet neighborhood and has transformed the lot into an eyesore, neighbors complain.

The neighbors plan to complain Monday at a borough commissioners work session at the Municipal Hall. The public meeting starts at 5 p.m. but the neighbors are scheduled to attend at 7 p.m.

"It's interfering with our quality of life and damaging the value of our homes," said Maryanne Shay, a retired school teacher who has organized neighbors. "We have young children in this neighborhood with no place to play. It's a terrible mess."

Borough Administrator Sharon McCullough said the lot at the end of the Maple Avenue was used because the public works lot on Centre Street was not available. An ongoing environmental remediation effort has reduced the space normally used for the storage of construction equipment by contractors working in the borough. Having these areas reduces the cost of construction projects, McCullough said.

"The contractors did not keep the lot as clean as we would have preferred," McCullough said. "We talked to them about cleaning it up."

She said work to repair water main and sanitary sewers in the neighborhood near Maple Avenue and Grove Street began in September and should be done by the end of this month. But Shay and other neighbors said their neighborhood is quickly deteriorating and they need change now.

"This looks like a municipal dump," Shay said Friday, surveying several acres of rusted manhole covers, drainage pipe pieces, piles of dirt and a the rear end of a rusted tractor trailer on the lot. "It's ruining the reputation of our neighborhood."

Shay pointed to a historical marker several yards from the makeshift dump. It marks the spot where some of the oldest dinosaur bones ever discovered were found in the 1800s. It's at the entrance to the lot, which is surrounded by woods that back on to Cooper River and a ravine. It was formally a sewage treatment plant but has been out of use for several decades.

Shay said the lot looked a lot worse before McCullough met with her and other neighbors there on Nov. 30. It was cleared of several trucks of trash and other debris then, but was still strewn with debris late last week.

"We want them to close the site," said Shay, 81, who has lived on Maple Avenue for the past 36 years.