2nd JCPL Hearing Will be March 29 at Brookdale Community College

MIDDLETOWN, NJ - As Patch has previously reported, there will be a second public JCP&L hearing on the proposed power lines and it will be Wednesday, March 29 from 5:30 to 11 p.m. The new venue for the second hearing will be in the Collins Arena at Brookdale Community College.

As they did last time, the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law (OAL) is overseeing the hearing. OAL judge Gail Cookson originally planned to have the second hearing at Middletown High School North, but so many people are expected to attend the second hearing that they had to move it to the much larger venue at Brookdale (765 Newman Springs Road in Lincroft).

"Last time we estimate 2,500 showed up and only about half of that were able to get into the high school," said Middletown resident and RAGE organizer Rachael Kanapka. "This time the judge is having it at a bigger venue to be able to allow more members of the public to get in and get a chance to speak."

This hearing is supposed to be more about the public speaking, instead of elected officials: Only members of the public who did not get to speak on January 25 will be eligible to speak on March 29. Elected officials who already spoke will not be speaking.

After this, the OAL will hold a second round of closed hearings in mid-April. These are private hearings, closed to the public, at which JCP&L attorneys will present evidence supporting the project, and will be countered by RAGE's own attorney, and the attorney retained by Middletown, Holmdel, Hazlet and Aberdeen to fight the proposal.

Judge Cookson then has up to 90 days to make her recommendation on whether or not the BPU should approve or reject the Monmouth County Reliability Project. The BPU could either accept her opinion, reject it or modify it. From there, either RAGE or any municipality could appeal the Board's final decision.