The state also raised many low bridges to allow the tall cruise ships to navigate upriver.
East Rutherford, NJ--Nearly a year has passed since New
Jersey hosted the first outdoor (expected) cold weather Super Bowl, where the
Seahawks thrashed the Broncos like it was 1987, 1988, or 1990. Officially, the
big game festivities were a bi-state affair, a first for the NFL, as events
were also held across the Hudson River in Manhattan (The Big Apple Garden Super
Bowl).
The two states invested a hefty sum of cash to have the game,
especially for security measures. New Jersey also spent billions more—possibly
to outshine their NYC neighbors—to dredge and widen the Hackensack River and to
remove and raise bridges as needed in order to accommodate large party cruise
ships to dock “as close as possible” to MetLife Stadium.
Manhattan hosted its own cruise ship party along the Hudson
at Pier 53. While this celebration featured the likes of Jay Z, Beyoncé,
Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Jennifer Lopez, and Brad Pitt, the Hackensack
River ships welcomed Macaulay Culken, the Spin Doctors, Matthew Modine, Marla
Gibbs, Greg Evigan, Scott Wolf, and many more.
The Garden State, according to Governor Christ Christie, was "more
than happy" to be co-hosting the NFL's showcase competition with New York. But,
at the same time, did not want to be "completely in the shadows of the
twenty-three square mile island's skyscrapers" when it came to the big
parties and the popular, interactive NFL Experience for the fans.
The task to bring three Carnival cruise liners up the Hackensack River,
to within walking distance of MetLife, aimed to move the party epicenter from
Manhattan to North Jersey. Not only did the waterway require dredging but
several low-clearing bridges (rail and automobile) needed to be raised fifty
feet or more and passages widened to allow the ships to navigate north to East
Rutherford.
The Hackensack River flows nearly 50 miles from New York
State, parallel to the Hudson River, south through North Jersey and into Newark
Bay. It is one of the many rivers that supply the deep, natural, ship-friendly
port of New York and New Jersey—a port that allowed the region to grow into the
metropolis it is today.
How did the vast (and necessary?) Hackensack River cruise
ship party project all work out? The company responsible gave a tour of the $6
billion project in early December 2013.
The winds whipping across the wetlands on either side of the
lethargic river gave the water reeds a motion all their own, breaking from the
pattern of the waterway’s choppy waves and the narrow ship’s widening wake. I
stood near the bow to take it all in; I wanted to get out from behind the
enclosed, confined space of the bridge. The captain warned that I wouldn’t last
long out there, that the “flat openness of the Meadowlands lets the wind do its
thing.”
My eyes watering, the gusts forcing them into a tight quarter
moon shape, I could make out the project of several barges and a pumping ship
not too far ahead.
“Is this a great use of taxpayer money?” the captain in
charge of the moving boat and the massive project repeated my question. “Well,
that really isn’t my concern. I’m paid to make the river deeper and the passages
wider and higher.”
On the day of project boat tour, the Super Bowl was still a
couple months away, and the contractor in charge of dredging the river in time
for the weeklong festivities before the game’s kickoff was pushing to complete
the complex plan, which started six months after the state was awarded the game
in May 2010. He seemed a bit nervous about the deadline.
Millions of tons of river bottom sediment had been
removed—vacuumed up with massive pumps—placed on hopper barges, and dumped ten miles
off the Sandy Hook coastline into the Atlantic Ocean. Time will likely return
at least some of the river sediment to New York Bay at some point, based on ocean
currents.
Some contaminated sediment was taken to a nearby processing
and treatment facility in West Rutherford, NJ, then onto a final “resting
place” in South Dakota by sealed railroad freight cars.
“Entire bridges were
removed and raised and rebuilt to provide a path for the cruise ships,” Dave
McKoskey, a senior engineer with Whetlands Engineers, Inc., explained. “The
state spent nearly six billion dollars to deepen the river for the Super Bowl.”
Today, the three ships—and the B- and C-list celebrity
passengers—are long gone from the weather-worn wooden docks a stone’s throw
from the field. The parties were declared a hit; only one ship became stuck on
the river bottom at low tide; and one ship came within one quarter inch of an
overhead railroad bridge.
“I think it was well worth $6 billion to have a really good
ship party close to the game,” said Governor Christie. “Yes, it was a great
allocation of taxpayer money. We were on a world stage, what was I supposed to
do? We’re New Jerseyans, we’re not going to let New Yorkers have all the fun.”
When asked why not just dock the New Jersey ships in Hoboken
along the Hudson River, Christie smiled and said, “That’s not within walking
distance to MetLife ... it's just not.”
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