Athletic Field Repair Could Cost More Than $500,000

The costs from damage caused by Tropical Storm Irene keep piling up. But this time it’s for the School District, not the township.

Estimates for repairing the collapsed bank of the Rahway River along the Paper Mill playing fields across from the Middle School have come back higher than the school district or township expected, Township committee member Tom McDermott said this week.

“As part of the joint fields, we do a lot of work with the Board of Ed, and the estimate to rebuild it is in excess of $500,000,” he said. “That wasn’t a planned capital expense and certainly not in the budget for this year....They are putting up another permanent fence for safety reasons.”

Even if the school district had the money to spend now, officials would have to get permits from the Department of Environmental Protection, which can take several months, and there are budget rules that don’t make it easy to spend that kind of money out of the capital fund, said School District Business Administrator Steve DiGeronimo.

DiGeronimo said the more than $500,000 figure is a preliminary one and that was given to the district without any exploration of what it will take to fix the riverbank.

“We’re hoping to get an estimate that’s well south of that number,” he said. “The million dollar – or half million dollar – question is, ‘Where are we going to get this money? That we don’t know.”

Much of it – possibly 80 percent, he said, he hopes will be paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).

“FEMA has to be involved in the process,” he aid.

Meanwhile, the fields are still playable and a fence will soon be built, shortening the width of the field by several feet.

“It’s not an ideal situation,” DiGeronimo said. “But we’re not in danger.”