Galloway Residents Come Out for DEP Meeting

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection held a workshop meeting Tuesday afternoon at the Tony Canale Firefighters Training Facilitiy to provide residents, officials and their professionals ample time to see and comment on changes that are being made to Atlantic County's waste water management plan.

"The purpose of this meeting is to provide residents a chance to see the maps, to get comments and find out what the mistakes are," said Richard Brown of the NJDEP.

Several maps on hand turned out to be incorrect, showing areas to be wet when they were actually uplands.

Nonetheless, the changes to the wastewater management plan stem from new rules and regulations that were made to state statute in 2007, Atlantic County Department of Regional Planning and Development representative John Peterson said.

He estimated a couple of thousand of acres would be affected by the changes proposed in this new plan.

That is because NJDEP has targeted these parcels for removal from the sewer services areas designated within the county's waste management plan. Sewer Service areas are areas of a municipality where sewer lines can run. The last plan was created in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Peterson said.

Yet, these changes have had many questioning the method in which the parcels had been chosen, and, for others, means to open dialogue. 

"Some of the maps don't match up," Galloway resident Meg Worthington said, noting that she had come out more out of interest due to her real estate background than to report back to council or the planning board. She is also a former councilwoman from Galloway.

Local engineer Rob Reid, on the other hand, attended Tuesday's workshop meeting in regard to three separate and unrelated projects he is working on for clients—one of which is the Seaview in Galloway. He noted that the maps misidentified several areas as wetlands but they were actually uplands.

One of those parcels happened to be one of the three he's been working on.

"Those areas should remain in the sewer service area because (the lots) are uplands," he said.

He managed to persuade NJDEP to consider eliminating the site near the industrial park and a second parcel along Mill Road across from California Avenue. The site will be developed into the housing development California Commons.

NJDEP had the entire lot marked as being wetlands, but, in the case of California Commons, only a small section of the parcel, in the rear, is wetlands. The rest is not.

Reid said he felt pleased with the outcome of this meeting. The NJDEP officials showed interest in what he had to say.

Brown noted that the NJDEP plans to work with these towns. In the coming weeks, NJDEP will be sitting down with the towns to address some of their concerns, he said.

In the mean time, for anyone who was unable to attend the work meeting on Tuesday, the NJDEP will accept comments up to April 28, he said.