FAIR HAVEN – Jennifer Spitz said the decorative molding is rattling off the walls of her home and a nearby brush processing operation is to blame.
Spitz resides on William Street, in a neighborhood that backs up to a wooded area of Fair Haven Fields. At Monday’s borough council meeting she played a 45-second video filmed from the deck in her backyard.
It wasn’t the woodland setting that was the focal point, but rather the video’s soundtrack, a constant chorus of industrial buzzing and grinding coming from beyond the trees at the borough’s designated processing site.
Sptiz said twice a year, for days and sometimes two to three weeks at a time, her home shakes, the backyard is unusable and her kids are unable to ride their bikes to school because of the operation.
The process includes 18-wheeler trucks transporting brush collected from Fair Haven and Rumson to the facility before it’s loaded into an industrial grinder.
To avoid transport during peak school hours, early morning drop-off and afternoon pickup, the grinding can begin as early as 7 a.m. Fair Haven Police Chief Joseph McGovern told residents Monday the operation’s early start time is protected by ordinance.
“It is not an appropriate location any longer,” Spitz said. “The neighborhood has changed. It’s not fair to our lives. It’s not fair to our health.”
In an interview, borough administrator Teresa Casagrande said the location of the site – between William Street and several baseball fields, basketball courts and a soccer pitch at Fair Haven Fields – is a pre-existing condition of the neighborhood that dates back to the 1950s.
“We’ve worked to make this as efficient a process as we can. We’ve gotten the collection down to six months out of the year, when it used to be nine. And now we only process twice a year and try to have the operation completed in less than a week, weather pending,” Casagrande said, noting the job is completed before Fair Haven Day and in the late fall.
Fair Haven and Rumson entered into a shared service agreement in April 2012, trading key maintenance services to collectively cut costs.
Under the terms, Fair Haven handles the collection and processing of both boroughs’ brush, as well as offering engineering services from in-house professionals for small jobs.
In return, maintenance of Fair Haven parks and municipal grounds, as well as street-sweeping and storm-water catch-basin cleaning falls under the purview of Rumson.
Since it’s been a mutually beneficial partnership for both parties, Spitz wondered if the borough could pursue a similar interlocal agreement to take brush processing outside the municipal border.
“I don’t see any way to relocate the facility in the borough, so the only other choice would be to close it down,” Mayor Ben Lucarelli said. “Then we’re left with handling the disposable brush in a proper and environmentally conscious way.”
Lucarelli said closing the facility would probably mean adding two more employees to the Department of Public Works and purchasing a $400,000 rear loader vehicle, like a garbage truck. Additional transportation costs would also come into play.
“You’re talking about adding millions of dollars to the budget in order to accomplish this,” Lucarelli said.
Resident Bob Donnelly questioned whether the site could be relocated deeper within the 73-acre Fair Haven Fields tract, possibly in the natural area.
Lucarelli said it’s something he has explored, but the borough’s Fair Haven Fields Natural Area Advisory Committee quickly squashed.
“They are quite defensive of that area and want to keep it natural. So I don’t see Fair Haven Fields as a viable option. Hypothetically, if we got approval of that committee, then we’d have to get approval from the county, followed by the state. And from what I understand that’s exceedingly difficult,” Lucarelli said.
Casagrande told residents a cooperative county facility for peninsula towns at Fort Monmouth was another option investigated by the mayor, but “Fort Monmouth turned it down.”
“I can’t accept ‘no’ any longer,” Sptiz said in a post-meeting interview. “I’m asking (the council) to represent us and find a better way to do this, whether that’s a partnership with another town or with the county. I’d like their help in figuring that out. I know they’re volunteers, which is why I’m willing to volunteer and do the legwork. I just need some direction. I’m pleading with them to help.”
Spitz called the processing center a “missed opportunity,” and a prime location for a dog park, or a community garden.
The next Fair Haven Fields Advisory Committee Meeting is scheduled for July 17.
