BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer
ALLENTOWN – The Board of Education’s only wastewater treatment option for the proposed middle school on Ellisdale Road may be to tap into the Beacon Hill sewage treatment plant across the street.
The Beacon Hill facility services K. Hovnanian developments Four Seasons and Heritage Green. A current township ordinance prohibits any extension of the sewage treatment plant, but officials could change that ordinance.
Because of soil contamination issues at the Ellisdale Road school site, officials in neighboring Allentown – which is part of the Upper Freehold Regional School District – are touting a tract on Breza Road in Upper Freehold as an alternative school site. The Breza Road property is currently before the Upper Freehold Planning Board because the New York City-based Rockefeller Group wants to build 1.8 million square feet of warehouse space there.
The Board of Education’s engineer, Paul Pogorzelski, of Van Cleef Engineering Associates in Robbinsville, took time off from his vacation to address the wastewater issues at the school site on July 19.
Pogorzelski started his presentation by stating that a senior partner in his firm has an ownership interest in the Breza Road site. He wanted to let the board know in case it considered this a conflict of interest. He said someone could assert that he could sway a decision between the Breza and Ellisdale Road sites.
Board President Joseph Stampe said the board wanted to discuss the Ellisdale Road site. He said he did not think Pogorzelski had any conflict of interest regarding the information he was presenting for that location.
Board member Jeanette Bressi said architect David Fraytag recommended that the board not pursue the Breza Road property at this time.
While the board had intended to build its own sewage treatment plant for the school, Pogorzelski said that plan is inconsistent with the township’s wastewater management plan and the State Development and Redevelopment Plan (SDRP).
Because the site that the school would be constructed on is located in what the SDRP considers a Planning Area 4, it cannot have a wastewater treatment plant, according to Pogorzelski.
The SDRP only permits wastewater treatment plants in locations considered to be planning areas 1 or 2, Pogorzelski said.
Monmouth County officials, however, would not allow the township to change the site’s designation to a Planning Area 2, he said.
Upper Freehold officials also approached the Office of Smart Growth (OSG) about having that section of the township designated as an extension of the Allentown village center, which would allow for the creation of a wastewater treatment plant. However, Allentown Mayor Stuart Fierstein said that Allentown would not endorse the plan, which is necessary for the plan’s implementation. Fierstein opposes the warehouse development on the Breza Road site.
According to Pogorzelski, the option of connecting to the existing plant would save taxpayers between $200,000 and $300,000. The board did not initially choose this option, he said, because feedback from the community stated that the neighborhood did not want it.
The township’s ordinances currently do not permit any expansion of the Beacon Hill facility, but the township could adopt an ordinance revising the franchise in order for this option to work, according to Pogorzelski.
The project would also require getting other necessary permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which may take 18 to 24 months, he said.
Bressi said the public needs to know that these factors are not unique to the Ellisdale Road site, but to Upper Freehold. She said the entire town lies in Planning Areas 4 and 5, where wastewater treatment plants are not permitted.
Board member Steve Murphy asked why the township never designated a school site in its master plan.
“This is going on everywhere in the state,” Pogorzelski said. “No one envisioned it would lead to the quagmire it has at the DEP.”
Bressi said the board included Allentown in its decision-making process regarding the school site. When the towns were looking at potential sites, she said, Allentown told the board there was not enough sewage capacity at the Breza Road site for a school. Allentown has its own sewage treatment plant, she said.
Murphy asked why the borough couldn’t grant the extension of its village center to the Ellisdale Road site if Allentown now has enough sewage capacity to consider the Breza Road site as a site for the new school.
In an interview, Fierstein said he voted in favor of the December 2004 referendum for the new middle school, but feels that he and the public were misled because the referendum contained no information about the contamination on the site.
When asked about Murphy’s suggestion, Fierstein said it would not work because Allentown does not have a sewer service permit in Upper Freehold.
“It’s under the same state regulations as any other utility,” he said.
Fierstein said he was not playing politics when he said Allentown would not endorse the OSG extension of the village center designation. He said he feels that granting the extension would not be in the best interests of the children and school employees. In addition, he alleged that the Board of Education just wants to meet a schedule with its new middle school.