USDA Grants $2M for NJ Rural Wastewater Project

WOODBINE, N.J. — The Borough of Woodbine, along with the Woodbine Municipal Utilities Authority, requested $4 million and was awarded $2 million from the USDA Rural Development Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant (WWDLG) Program for a rural wastewater sewer project.

Along with Cape May County, the borough’s $12.5 million Woodbine Sewer System Construction Project will help address environmental and economic issues in the Cape May region. The county will construct the shared force main from the landfill to the Seven Mile Beach/Middle Township wastewater treatment facility (WWTF), for an additional estimated $8 million.

Currently, landfill leachate is trucked 15 miles to the WWTF, requiring an average of 18 tanker trucks trips per day at a cost of $280,000 per year. Completion of the two phase rural wastewater project will bring the landfill runoff–along with sewage from Woodbine’s new sewer system–to Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority’s WWTF.

This new pipeline, crossing through the famous Pinelands, will also save the county 334,000 gallons of diesel fuel over the next 30 years, eliminating the equivalent of 2,970 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to Joseph Rizzuto, the utilities authority director for the county.

It has taken us several years of work to get to this point,” Woodbine Mayor William Pikolycky told the Cape May County Herald.

The borough homes and businesses rely on aging septic systems. Pikolycky said a lot of the building lots are smaller than the minimum three acres required, so property owners would be required to upgrade to new septic systems if they want to sell. Now, they’ll have the opportunity to connect to a new public sewage system.

A USDA Special Evaluation Assistance for Rural Communities and Households grant helped fund a study of the sanitary sewer system, and a USDA Pre-Planning Grant supported application planning work to obtain the WWDLG grant award, according to Pikolycky.