BRICK – When the Garden State Parkway was widened near Interchange 91, residents living in a nearby condominium complex said the project has negatively impacted their standard of living and even their health.
The project, which ran from 2014 to its completion in 2017, was designed to improve safety by restoring full-width shoulders, improving sight distances and removing obstructions between mileposts 83 and 100.
Part of the improvements for the roadway included creating a drainage basin in the median near Interchange 91, which was clear cut, and as a result, the homes at Evergreen Woods, located just a stone’s throw from the busy roadway, have been opened to the noise and pollution from cars traveling in both directions.
One of three homeowners from Evergreen Woods – John Sluka, Michele Spector and Stephen Brill – has attended nearly every council meeting since that time, advocating for a sound wall to mitigate the added sound and exhaust smoke coming from the Parkway.
The community does not qualify for a sound wall because the criteria to build one has not been met: travel lanes were not moved closer to the homes and a sound study conducted by the county determined that there was no additional sound mitigation needed.
During the most recent council meeting, Brill – an Evergreen Woods resident of 20 years – said the situation has gotten worse since the recent removal of trees and bushes from the north- and southbound lanes.
“The center median was clear-cut to install a detention basin that never has retained water,” he said. “Many of the remaining trees along the shoulder with Evergreen Woods have since died, further increasing both the visual and noise pollution.”
Brill said he is not suggesting that a sound barrier be built at the expense of Brick Township, but rather that the township “employ all its resources to research viable alternatives to mitigate both noise and visual pollution,” and have the state government pressure the NJ Turnpike Authority to correct the situation.
At a previous council meeting, Township Business Administrator Joanne Bergin reviewed “how many emails, how many meetings, how many people we met with, how much lobbying we did” over the last ten years, and reminded everyone that in 2019, “at our expense, at the cost of $52,250, we paid for a noise study” to provide the data that sound mitigation was needed.
If the noise levels exceeded the allowable threshold at the six locations at the southbound side of the Parkway, Bergin said they would take the results of the report to get something done.
The independent contractor who conducted the study found that the sound levels were below the Federal Highway Administration and the NJ DEP threshold for noise impact, she said.
The noise study was directed by the three Evergreen Woods residents, who said where the machine should be, how close it should be to the homes. “They were very involved in that study,” Bergin said.
The township administration does not have a lot of options now, Bergin said. There is only one other example in New Jersey of a community, in East Brunswick, that wanted a noise barrier where it did not meet the criteria.
“How that was resolved is that the residents who requested the noise wall paid for it through a special assessment, so we also talked about not going down that route,” she said.
She said there is not enough justification for the township to continue to meet with the NJ Turnpike Authority when all the options have been exhausted.
Councilwoman Marianna Pontoriero said the situation at Evergreen Woods has a complicated history and thanked Bergin for reminding her about the “lack of the objective evidence which was required to get to the next level.”
