By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
The agency that operates the Townsends Inlet Bridge will be breaking out the scrub brushes and power-washing equipment to remove graffiti scrawled on the underside of the span that links Sea Isle City and Avalon.
No date has been set yet for the cleanup work by the Cape May County Bridge Commission, but the agency stressed during its monthly board meeting Thursday that it is committed to removing the graffiti.
“Once this stuff’s removed, we’d like to keep it off, too,” Lewis Donofrio, the commission’s chief engineer, told the board members.
Spray-painting graffiti artists have used the tall concrete support piers underneath the bridge as a gigantic canvas of sorts for their work.
The way it is built, the Townsends Inlet Bridge hovers over the beach in the southern tip of Sea Isle, making it an easy target for graffiti artists who simply walk out to the piers.
Donofrio noted that he plans to speak with the Sea Isle Police Department about possibly starting foot patrols underneath the bridge to prevent even more graffiti from happening.
“When we’ve had projects, they’ve been very good about patrolling the area, especially when contractors have equipment down there. They’ve been very receptive to any request for additional police presence,” Donofrio said.
“We just want to have a dialogue with them. This problem exists, and there’s a couple different ways to combat it. Maybe just a little more (police) presence can prevent some of this,” he added.
In the meantime, Donofrio has been speaking with the Delaware River and Bay Authority, the agency that operates the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and the Delaware Memorial Bridge, for suggestions on how to clean off the graffiti from the Townsends Inlet Bridge.
He said the DRBA has recommended a biodegradable cleaning solution that can be used in concert with power washing.
“It’s very easy to remove,” he said.
Donofrio also mentioned that the bridge commission or possibly Cape May County may work in partnership with a local contractor to apply for a New Jersey Clean Communities grant to help remove the graffiti.
“The same program will also give you money for graffiti cleanups,” Donofrio said of the Clean Communities grant. “This would probably be done by a local contractor. He could seek this grant, get this money and clean the graffiti up. He would get the benefit of the money, we would get the benefit of the cleanup. It’s a beautification program for the community itself.”
The bridge commission has been discussing the graffiti problem for the last three months after it was first reported in a SeaIsleNews.com story in January.
The Townsends Inlet Bridge is a critical link between Sea Isle and Avalon. Donofrio believes that Townsends Inlet has the worst graffiti problem among the five toll bridges operated by the Cape May County Bridge Commission along the Ocean Drive.
Donofrio explained that graffiti is periodically removed by Cape May County cleanup crews, but more of it follows later on. He said it appears the graffiti has gotten progressively worse over the past 10 years.
