Brian Unger
Guest Column
Resident makes plea for Oceanport Creek property
(Open letter to Larry Miles, bureau chief, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Endangered & Non-game Species Program)
Many residents of Oceanport and adjacent towns along our two-river area are concerned that a state agency — the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority — wants to sell off an ecologically sensitive property on Oceanport Creek to the highest bidder after they receive municipal and state approvals for construction and land use.
However, this woods and wetland parcel along the creek is a highly valuable natural resource and should be preserved in its natural state. The state policy here should be to expand the wooded area to cover the entire site in order to enhance wildlife protection and protect this valuable watershed. The Authority’s housing project could easily be moved to a less environmentally sensitive area nearby, where they own other large tracts of land.
This is virtually the only remaining undisturbed woods and wetland area at the west end of the Shrewsbury River, and is therefore an extremely sensitive and important estuarine wildlife area. An inspection of the waterfront along the west end of the river — including the river banks and creek banks of both the borough of Oceanport and the borough of Little Silver — reveals that virtually every significant parcel of open land, every point, every river bank, every piece of natural land jutting into the river and its two creek branches are blanketed with human residential and commercial development — homes, condominiums, parking lots, military buildings, office buildings, etc.
Bald eagles are an important but endangered species in New Jersey, with only one nesting pair in Monmouth County, nearby in the Swimming River area. The state government has expended valuable resources, wisely we think, in an effort to reintroduce the bald eagle to its former habitats in New Jersey. This wooded area around Oceanport Creek has been identified as a potentially important foraging and roosting area for the Swimming River eagles.
Please be advised an even more intensive and related commercial and residential development is planned for this immediate area, right across the street from these woods and wetlands, the huge town center mall, with several hundred apartments.
Now is the time to stop the overdevelopment of this area — the degradation of its ecology — and do something both real and symbolic to help these animals, who cannot protect themselves in the face of relentless human onslaught.
There is a large condominium complex immediately west of this site, perhaps 100 acres in size, that was originally the other half of this very same woods and wetland area. The construction of that residential neighborhood has already pushed all the wildlife out of that parcel and into the parcel under consideration before us today.
In addition to the bald eagle pair that needs this site for foraging and roosting, other species utilizing this site are the hairy woodpecker (Picoides villosus), the red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus), the white-tailed deer (Odcoileus virginianus), the Canada goose (Branta Canadensis), the mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) and the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). I have myself observed a great blue heron on this site, standing straight up in the stream bed, not more than several weeks ago, and in the company of several other observers who viewed the bird as well. A local resident informed us great blue herons are frequently observable on this site.
As you know human proximity and human disturbance are the two main environmental factors associated with the failure of eagles to generate hatchlings.
This project involves placing a huge retention basin alongside the wooded area, with an underground pipe dug into the woods, emptying out overflow water into the woods. With upwards of 48 homes with two-car garages being constructed — as well as local streets and a through-road — there will be automotive-associated runoff into this critical wildlife habitat. And this on a property that has such a high watershed that most of the homes cannot even have basements.
This human residential development would be better situated across Port-au-Peck Avenue to the south, where it cannot harm the wildlife or the ecology of Oceanport Creek and its tributary streams and associated wetlands. That is where state policy should take it. Let us preserve the tract under review here for future generations, as a natural land and wildlife preservation area.
Brian Unger is a resident of Long Branch and has long been involved in area environmental issues.