News from Skylands CLEAN, Inc.

Revived project upsets officials, environmentalists

Friday, July 25, 2008
BY BRYAN LA PLACA
SUBURBAN TRENDS

A developer can pursue building 100 townhouses in a West Milford community that would be called Valley Ridge, a state appeals court ruled.

The project -- opposed by local environmental activists -- was thought dead after Atlanta-based developer Trammell Crow Residential (TCR) wasn't able to extend its exemption from the state Highlands Act last August. But now it has new life.

“The Appellate Division confirmed what we’ve been saying all along - that there was no basis for the West Milford Planning Board to turn down the site plan application to begin with,” said Jonathan Epstein, an attorney for TCR.

The 2004 law tightly restricts development in North Jersey in order to protect the state’s drinking water supply. TCR bought the 27-acre property of the proposed 11-acre development at Union Valley and Dockerty Hollow roads that same year from the Valley Ridge Development Corporation, which had received the preliminary approvals.

TCR’s project was originally exempt from the Highlands Act because the project’s preliminary development approvals came in 1997, before the Act’s adoption. But the project remained tied up in court until the exemption expired.

The environmental group Skylands CLEAN had requested clarification on TCR’s site plan application in February 2006, challenging the validity of the preliminary site plan approval and the project’s grandfathered status.

The West Milford Planning Board asked a state judge to rule on the validity of the preliminary approval, which had expired in 2002. Superior Court Judge Anthony Graziano directed the Planning Board in June 2006 to proceed with hearings on Valley Ridge without ruling on the validity of the preliminary approval.

The judge said the developer’s reliance on township planning officials’ opinions on the application, which TCR considered in its decision to invest in the project, gave TCR the right to proceed.

Hearings on Valley Ridge resumed, and West Milford’s planning board denied TCR’s final site plan approval in July 2006, citing a lack of recent water testing and environmental impact studies.

TCR appealed, and CLEAN joined in support of the Planning Board’s decision, challenging Valley Ridge’s Highlands exemption.

Yesterday's state Appellate Division ruling came as a disappointment to Skylands CLEAN.

“This is a crushing blow for West Milford residents who have guarded their water supply so carefully for so many years. Further, it undermines Highlands protection in general,” said Robin O’Hearn, Skylands CLEAN executive director. “If the opinions of local planning officials can get developers around Highlands regulations, we’re all in trouble.”

O’Hearn called TCR’s actions an “end run around the Highlands rules.”

“TCR made significant changes to their site plan from what had been presented in the 1990s. They need a new water permit and must condemn property for their sewer line. This project should have never been brought before the Planning Board, and its ultimate approval is the direct result of mistakes by planning officials. What a shame,” she said.

The township hasn't yet decided on a response, said Mayor Bettina Bieri. The Township Council will discuss the matter privately with its legal counsel during a future executive session, she said.

TCR is still awaiting response from the state Department of Environmental Protection for an extension of its Highlands Act exemption, said Epstein, the company's attorney.

“There was an effort to delay the project because there was no merit to the position taken by the Planning Board, and in essence that’s what both the trial court held and that’s what the appellate court affirmed,” he said.

Copyright © North Jersey Media Group

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