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JUNE 5-11, 2024
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‘Residents are pleased’
Borough engineer finds solution to neighborhood flooding issue By KATHY CHANG The Sun
Courtesy of Borough of Palmyra
Environmental Resolutions’ Neil Werket, Vice President William Kirchner and Katherine Villacis were recognized for the company’s Temple Boulevard Tidal Garden project.
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A storm left residents living in Palmyra’s Temple Boulevard neighborhood with “severe flooding and massive headaches.” A nearby storm pipe would often overflow, making impervious covering the perfect spot for rainwater to collect. In addition, the intersection of four roads – Temple Boulevard, Firth Lane, Leconey Avenue and Second Street – often left locals and passersby alike confused on how to navigate the area, according to a press release from Environmental Resolutions Inc. (ERI). That’s when professionals at Mount Laurel-based ERI, in coordination with Palmyra officials, decided a solution was needed to address both problems. ERI is the borough’s engineer. “This eventually led to the creation of the Temple Boulevard Tidal Garden,” according to the press release. The new decorative garden, outfitted with a 30,000-plus-gallon underground stormwater storage system, not only gives excess stormwater a place to go, but helps reconfigure the layout
of the previously puzzling intersection. The project took two seemingly unrelated problems and found a way to solve both in an economical fashion, which is ultimately what won it an award from the New Jersey Society of Municipal Engineers (NJSME). ERI developed a pocket park concept with green infrastructure solutions to help mitigate the neigborhood’s constant flooding concerns. The result includes vegetative swales and a rain garden with an overflow inlet into the proposed subsurface stormwater system improvements for the site, according to ERI’s website. In addition to the green infrastructure solutions, the park will provide a gathering area with seating, landscaping, a lawn area, interpretative signage and a custom steel sign that will relate Palmyra’s history. Funding for the improvements came from the Federal Transportation Alternatives Plan. ERI’s Vice President William H. Kirchner recently accepted the NJSME’s Municipal Design Projects Under 20,000 Award. “The Firth Street and Tem-
please see FLOODING, page 2
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