OCEAN TOWNSHIP — The Township Council is considering joining with other municipalities as a member of the Whale Pond Brook Watershed Association, a partnership that would work to clean up the watershed that spans from Long Branch to Tinton Falls.
According to Councilman William Garofalo, the partnership would also help local towns deal with environmental problems like flooding as well as pollution of water bodies in the watershed.
“What they want us to do is go into forming like the Deal Lake Commission, except there are no funds involved,” he said at the Ocean Township Council meeting on Jan. 10. “In my opinion, the answer to [flooding of] Whale Pond Brook lies in Lake Takanassee.”
TheWhale Pond Brook Watershed is the area of land where surface water runoff from rain, melting snow or ice converges and eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean. It runs through Ocean Township, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Eatontown and Tinton Falls.
The Township Council is expected to approve a resolution entering into the watershed partnership during the Jan. 25 meeting.
If the council takes that step, Ocean Township would join Long Branch and Tinton Falls in the watershed association. Those towns passed resolutions joining the watershed group last year.
Garofalo explained that flooding could become more of a problem because Whale Pond Brook no longer flows freely due to silt built up in some of the channels.
“The [brook] is not moving anymore; [Lake] Takanassee is now silted-in,” he said. “It’s really not going anywhere.
“I think this is a group that can do some grant writing and maybe get Takanassee dredged to get a grant to repair the outflow pipe.”
He added that the watershed association could be a vehicle for the township to work with other communities to solve the flooding problems.
Garofalo said the outflow pipe is boarded up and he believes that if the pipe is uncovered, it would still be blocked by silt.
He said that if nothing is done, Whale Pond Brook might eventually be a bigger problem than Poplar Brook.
“This last little rain, we had flooding. I think Whale Pond Brook is going to be as much of a problem as Poplar Brook is now in five years,” he said. “We still need to press the county to fix that retention pond on the tributary.”
Flooding has been a problem because Poplar Brook overflows following major storms. The Poplar Village senior complex located in the Poplar Brook floodplain has been inundated several times after major storms, forcing the evacuation of residents.
Garofalo said flooding issues in the township accelerated when Rolling Meadows, a 328-unit senior development on Wayside Road, was built.
“I know the flooding really started when Rolling Meadows was built,” he said. “When that watershed was destroyed, it would rush straight down.”
The development was the center of controversy when former Mayor Terrence Weldon pleaded guilty to charges of accepting a bribe to amend the site plan approval for the gated adult community.
The watershed initiative is expected to boost chances of securing grant funding under the Clean Water Act (CWA) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“We do believe in a few years we will be able to get a federal 319 [CWA] grant and fix all the problems at the beginning of the watershed,” Faith Teitelbaum, a trustee for the watershed association, told the Long Branch City Council in a presentation in December.
“We think it is very important that all the towns sign on as members of the watershed association so that when we go for a grant, we can say that we are partners and that we are working with all towns and all different partners,” she added.
The association has an overall plan to clean up and beautify the watershed and, according to the group’s website, plans call for creating a greenway along the watershed.
“Our vision is to restore the eroded banks and water quality in the Whale Pond Brook watershed and be able to walk along a greenway from the source to the ocean,” the website states.
The greenway would include a scenic hike past some of the area’s historic attractions, including the 100-year-old Ross Island cottage, the old Brinley grist mill site, Woodrow Wilson Hall at Monmouth University, Takanassee Lake and historic Life Saving Station No. 5, according to the watershed association website.
The association has spearheaded cleanups of the watershed since November 2010, and during that time some major issues that led to pollution and other watershed problems have been discovered.
The Whale Pond Brook Watershed Association is made up of a group of volunteers from the five host towns.
In addition to partnering with each municipality in the watershed, the association also has partnered with local environmental groups, including the Jersey Shore Group of the Sierra Club, N.J. Friends of Clearwater, Monmouth County Cool Cities Partnership, and the Urban Coast Institute.
For more information on the Whale Pond Brook Watershed Association, visit the organization’s website at http://restorethewatershed.org.