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New Contractor Focuses On Ending Months-Long Mahwah Detour

MAHWAH, N.J. – An end may be in sight for frustrated motorists forced to deal with a roughly 5-mile detour in Mahwah since last summer.

Bergen County Executive James Tedesco and Mahwah Mayor William Laforet surveyed the Route 202 construction.

Bergen County Executive James Tedesco and Mahwah Mayor William Laforet surveyed the Route 202 construction.

Photo Credit: Bill Laforet

County Executive James Tedesco recently gave the go ahead to swap the low-bid contractor hired to replace a culvert along the Route 202 corridor with Sanzari Construction, Mahwah Mayor William Laforet said.

“I am absolutely convinced that Sanzari is the best solution and that the county executive has done the right thing by making this decision,” he said. “The amount of work that has been done in just a couple of weeks is absolutely extraordinary.”

Laforet said it’s weather dependent, but he expects the detour to be gone by January 30, if not sooner, and for the rest of the aesthetic work to be complete by spring.

Construction started in the summer, when PSE&G began installing a high-pressure gas line. But that project, which was supposed to take about two weeks, ended up taking eight weeks because workers ran into a boulder “the size of a car,” Laforet said.

The delay pushed back the start date of the contractor hired to replace the culvert to alleviate flooding, he said. 

Even so, he said, “the work that he was doing at the pace that he was doing it, was absolutely compromising the work that we had planned for,” he said. The overall project is about three months behind schedule, he said.

On Thursday Sanzari Construction installed the precast culvert and will be working throughout the weekend to install a drainage line across the intersection of Route 202 and Darlington Ave., Laforet said.

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