Woodbury, New Jersey is getting $531,000 in federal money to replace and reline stormwater pipes that have been corroding under its streets for decades, a repair the small Gloucester County city couldn't afford on its own.
The work targets West Barber Avenue, where an 18-inch corrugated metal pipe will be dug out and replaced, and a stretch between South Horace and South Warner streets, where crews will line an aging 36-inch pipe from the inside rather than tear up the street. A separate 36-inch pipe connecting a bridge culvert on South Columbia Street will also be replaced. Myrtle Avenue is included in the project as well. The goal is straightforward: get stormwater moving faster and keep it off the streets.
The pipes being addressed are the kind installed across America from the 1950s through the 1980s. Corrugated metal pipes in particular are prone to rust and structural failure, and many are now well past the 50-to-75-year lifespans they were designed for. The American Society of Civil Engineers has long flagged the nation's stormwater systems as badly under-maintained, with hundreds of billions in deferred repairs piling up.
Woodbury sits near Woodbury Creek, a tributary of the Delaware River, in relatively low terrain that makes working stormwater infrastructure essential. The city has about 10,000 residents and a median household income around $50,000, well below the state average of roughly $89,000. That constrained tax base makes a $531,000 infrastructure project genuinely significant, and federal dollars the only realistic path to getting it done.
The EPA grant was authorized under the 2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act as a congressionally directed spending project, a category of funding that Congress brought back in 2021 after a decade-long ban on earmarks. The revival has given smaller cities like Woodbury a way to compete for federal infrastructure dollars that would otherwise go to larger, better-resourced applicants. Woodbury is represented in Congress by Rep. Donald Norcross (D), who has been active in securing similar local infrastructure investments across South Jersey. The same mechanism has helped other small cities tackle long-deferred repairs, like Steubenville, Ohio's $1 million wastewater equipment replacement.
New Jersey has faced growing pressure to upgrade its stormwater systems since Hurricane Ida killed 30 people and caused more than $2 billion in damage across the state in September 2021, much of it from overwhelmed drainage. The state updated its stormwater rules in early 2024 to require infrastructure capable of handling heavier rainfall driven by climate change, adding urgency for municipalities still running on mid-century pipes.
The grant was posted November 1, 2025. Construction timing has not been publicly announced.
