By Sunayana Prabhu
FREEHOLD – The proposed Kushner Companies development in Colts Neck is drawing more fire from environmentalists and residents and appears stuck in a revolving door of government agencies. Most recently the Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners sent the project back to the county’s planning board for “additional information” after pushback from residents and community groups at its Dec. 14 meeting.
The proposed Estates at Colts Neck, commonly referred to as Colts Neck Manor, has been in the pipeline for over a decade but has increased considerably since being approved by Colts Neck Township in 2006, according to an environmental study completed by Concerned Citizens, a Colts Neck-based group of residents and environmentalists. The report states the proposed development has expanded from 48 townhomes on nearly 40 acres of undeveloped land to a 360-unit apartment complex on the same site.
The site is located on Route 537 between routes 18 and 34, near Colts Neck High School and Five Points Park. Environmentalists are concerned because the site is bound by Yellow Brook, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) protected Class-1 tributary that flows into the Swimming River Reservoir; the reservoir provides drinking water to more than 300,000 Monmouth County residents.
The developer plans to construct an onsite Amphidrome® sewage treatment system to serve the 360 units, an expansion that requires an amendment to the county’s Water Quality Management Plan (WQMP), a state-mandated program ensuring clean water for all. If approved, the proposed amendment would allow the construction of a plant some say could irreversibly contaminate the county’s drinking water.
At the county commissioners’ meeting, homeowners, grassroots community groups like Concerned Citizens, geographers, engineers, members of the League of Women Voters (LWV) and some of the state’s leading environmentalists from the Sierra Club and Holmdel’s Citizens for Informed Land Use (CILU), implored county officials to veto the project. Several in attendance expressed concerns that neither the scope of the development nor the location is appropriate.
According to the environmental report, the NJDEP approved the system in 2006 when the development called for 48 townhomes with approximately 14,400 gallons of wastewater per day. That approval was “the largest configuration ever for NJ,” the report states; the project has now “increased 8 times,” creating a much larger impervious surface.
The current application will be the developer’s second WQMP modification request from the county and, subsequently, the NJDEP. If approved, it would allow discharge limits to exceed the present 20,000 gallons per day limit by almost 300% or 71,500 gallons of wastewater daily into disposal fields on the site.
The county commissioners decided to hold off on making a decision about the amendment, instead sending the application back to the county’s planning board for more information. Commissioner Director Thomas Arnone said the commissioners agreed that the environmental report presented by Concerned Citizens warranted reevaluation and further inquiry before any decision is made to amend the county’s WQMP.
“Professionals hired by the planning board will dive in deeper,” Arnone said, acknowledging that none of the county commissioners had expertise in the field. Independent professionals will reevaluate the application and also consider the environmental report to make a recommendation to the county planning board which will then be conveyed to the board of county commissioners for a final decision.
Evelyn Murphy, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Monmouth County, representing 320 members, told the board that the county has “spent millions of (tax) dollars protecting this land for open space” to ensure clean water flows into the reservoir. “Now we are on the cusp of undermining this good planning with poor land use decisions,” Murphy said, and the “indiscriminate placement of high-density development is threatening the Swimming River Reservoir’s watershed.”
Scott Carlin, Ph.D., a professional geographer from Red Bank, asked the county commissioners to consider “regenerative development,” building in a way that “works well for us as people and it works well for nature, as well.”
He noted the “reactive planning” which has been done “for 50 to 100 years,” degrades the water quality.
“It’s not a good thing to keep letting the water quality degrade.” Carlin noted development isn’t the only issue. “Climate change, biodiversity crisis, these are not abstract, unreal things; they are eradicating life on our planet.” One Holmdel resident called the decision of Colts Neck officials to approve Colts Neck Manor “disgusting” and urged the board of commissioners to “protect me, Holmdel and the rest of the towns of Monmouth County from a town that didn’t make a good decision.” “Our legacy to our youth – which you said is very important – is not going to be contaminated water and development,” she said, asking the commissioners not to set a precedent by approving the project.
On Monday, Dec. 18, the county’s planning board voted unanimously to refer the Colts Neck Manor WQMP to the Amendment Review Committee (ARC) for a “technical review.”
A presentation will be made to the county planning board about the findings of ARC “probably in February,” said Joseph Barris, planning board director.
The ARC is a committee of professionals who review, approve or deny proposals made to county commissioners with regards to WQMP modifications.
The WQMP program was created for certain municipalities by the NJDEP based on the Federal Clean Water Act, designed to provide water quality planning in the state and prevent the degradation of drinking water. The Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners is the designated planning agency appointed by the state to implement goals in protecting drinking water within the county.
“There are a lot of concerns regarding Monmouth County’s long-term drinking water,” said Kip Cherry, Sierra Club conservation chair. The ARC review “will be very useful for the county and for everyone who drinks water,” Cherry said.
Reiterating the major environmental concerns with Colts Neck Manor, Cherry said there is considerable new information county officials need to consider before deciding whether the WQMP amendment requested by Kushner for Colts Neck Manor should proceed.
According to Cherry, the proposed wastewater treatment system “will not remove fecal coliform bacteria to DEP standards.”
There are several ways “toxic carcinogenic chemicals and fecal coliform bacteria will enter Yellow Brook routinely that cannot be prevented,” she said, noting the treatment system “will not remove PFAS,” a group of carcinogenic “forever chemicals” found in household waste. Additionally, she said there are many concerns about the ability of the stormwater management system to deal effectively with roadway contaminants, onsite spills and leaks, and keeping large volumes of floodwaters from entering Yellow Brook and, ultimately, the Swimming River Reservoir.
The reservoir has been in a “state of drought for the last 20 years and municipalities around the county should be increasingly concerned about the quality and quantity of drinking water available to their communities,” Cherry said. “Municipalities such as Holmdel, Middletown, Shrewsbury and Tinton Falls, just to name a few, all depend on the Swimming River Reservoir.”
The Colts Neck Manor project has been embroiled in controversies ever since the Colts Neck Township Committee approved the project to avoid a builders’ remedy lawsuit from the developer.
While county officials have been blaming the township, “the buck stops with the county on water quality,” RoseAnn Scotti, a founder of Concerned Citizens said at the commissioners’ meeting. “They don’t feel that they are legally responsible for the water quality in Monmouth County. We feel they are legally responsible through state law.”
The article originally appeared in the December 21 – December 27, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
