ROBBINSVILLE: Settlement appears near in reforestation battle

By Joanne Degnan, Staff Writer
   ROBBINSVILLE — The township’s legal fight to get $3.5 million it says it is owed to replace 12,000 trees being bulldozed for the New Jersey Turnpike widening project is apparently close to being settled, both state and local officials said this week.
   An Oct. 1 hearing before Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg on the lawsuit filed jointly by Robbinsville, East Windsor and Hamilton was canceled because the towns were close to working out an agreement with the Turnpike Authority and state Department of Environmental Protection, officials said.
   ”It was in everyone’s interest to cancel the hearing because all parties are working amicably toward a settlement,” DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said.
   Although details of the potential settlement were not being disclosed Tuesday, before The Messenger-Press went to print, DEP officials have previously said they would prefer to gradually restore the money earmarked for the turnpike reforestation projects over the next few years. Officials would not comment on whether the proposed settlement gives the towns all the money they are owed for demolished trees, or provides just a portion of it.
   Robbinsville Township Administrator Tim McGough confirmed Tuesday that a settlement was pending but said he could not discuss the details.
   ”The lawyers are still going over the language,” Mr. McGough said. “But we expect a settlement soon and our first priority will be to use the funds provided to plant trees in the areas most impacted by the project, and then secondly, to plant trees at the schools.”
   The roots of the controversy date to shortly after June 29 when the Turnpike Authority commissioners voted to authorize transferring $15 million to the DEP to facilitate reforestation in seven towns where 443 acres of trees are being bulldozed for the highway-widening project that began in 2009. More than half of those trees are in East Windsor and Robbinsville townships.
   After it was learned that the DEP had decided to divert the reforestation funds for the operation of state parks, and the towns’ pleas for the money to be restored failed, the three municipalities filed a lawsuit Aug. 11 seeking to stop the actual transfer of the $15 million to DEP.
   The towns argued that the DEP’s plan to divert the money for park operations violated a 2001 state reforestation law, which requires any state agency that deforests more than a half-acre of land to submit a reforestation plan to DEP. Under the law, whenever it is not possible to plant all the replacement trees next to the deforested site, the remainder must be planted elsewhere in the affected municipality or within 5 miles of the site.
   The DEP argued that the diversion of the reforestation money for park operations was necessary because of a dire budget situation and the need to keep state parks open this year for the public.
   The DEP also noted its actions would not affect the Turnpike Authority’s plans to plant trees in the turnpike right-of-way areas closest to the new highway lanes. The reforestation funds, it said, were only to plant trees in other parts of the towns because not all of the replacements could be planted near the highway.
   The mayors of the affected towns, however, said they wanted all the trees their towns were owed, not just the ones in the turnpike right-of-way.
   A sign of the pending resolution was visible this week at the Community Park back soccer fields — the site of a political standoff earlier this summer — where turnpike contractors are now back and building the 12-foot landscaping berm that will separate the playing fields from the widening project.
   Robbinsville had previously agreed to sell a 2.3-acre parcel on the soccer fields that the turnpike needed for the widening project but had not yet closed on the real estate transaction when it learned about the diversion of the reforestation funds in the DEP’s operating budget.
   Mayor Dave Fried then had a township Public Works dump truck block the temporary construction access road on the township-owned land to prevent the turnpike’s contractors from accessing the site because he said he wasn’t getting any answers about the reforestation money.
   Although the real estate deal still hasn’t closed, the township is once again allowing the contractors to access the site now that a potential settlement has been reached. Mr. McGough said Tuesday that two-thirds of the construction work on the berm had been completed and that, weather-permitting, the rest of the earthwork should be finished in about a week.
   The Turnpike Authority has agreed to plant evergreen trees on top of the berm to block the view of the highway, and Mr. McGough said he is pushing for those plantings to be done this fall.
   The evergreens on the berm at the soccer fields are not connected to the trees involved in the pending DEP reforestation settlement, Mr. McGough said.