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Prepared to spend $410,434 to cover as early as July
BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The Christie administration is seeking a contractor willing to bury the Petty’s Run Colonial era archaeological site on the Statehouse lawn for $410,434.
Contractors can bid for the project until June 21. The administration wants to see the site buried as early as next month.
Mercer County state legislators and history community activists are urging the administration not to bury the site but Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, whose office overlooks it, considers the site an eyesore.
The administration points out that Petty’s Run was to be part of what was planned as $87 million Capital State Park, a project that has been tabled amid the state government’s financial troubles. The work to make Petty’s Run a site open to the public was expected to cost $10 million.
Archaeologists have unearthed the industrial remains of what once was the location of steel, cotton and paper mills dating back to 1731. The factories drew power from Petty’s Run, a creek that was ultimately buried under the Statehouse grounds that runs to the nearby Delaware River.
The administration’s plan to bury the site was first reported by NewJerseyNewsroom.com.
Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Mercer) is sponsoring legislation to save the archaeological site. She calls the plan to bury it "foolhardy.”
“It would be a much better use of taxpayer money to apply this $400,000 to preserve the site, rather than to undo the work that has already taken place and bury Petty’s Run indefinitely,” Watson Coleman said. “Filling in this site would not only mean throwing away a significant amount of money, but it would literally equate to burying history.”
State Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese told the Trenton Times, “The bid we put out and the work to be done is to have the fill done in a historically proper fashion, not just have some backhoe come in and put some dirt in there,” he said. “If in the future anybody wants to get in there again it will be much better preserved.”
