HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP: Group gets $1.25m loan to fix dam

At Honey Lake

By John Tredrea, Special Writer
A $1.25 million low-interest state loan to the Honey Lake Homeowners Association (HLHA) will be used to repair a dam at the lake, state and local officials said recently.
The 23-acre lake is in the Elm Ridge Park development in east-central Hopewell Township.
Legislation sponsored by state Sen. Shirley Turner and signed by Gov. Chris Christie provides $22.5 million in loans for dam repair and restoration projects around the state, including the dam at Honey Lake.
"These repairs are needed to protect against flooding, which can damage or destroy property and could even be life-threatening to those who get caught in flood waters," Sen. Turner said.
"We have to find ways to make smart investments in our infrastructure. The funding from this bill has the added benefit of not costing taxpayers any additional money because the money comes from a revolving loan fund."
Sen. Turner said the dam at Honey Lake "was in great need of repair and the concern was that they may have had to drain the lake."
It was four years ago that the state said that, due to problems with the dam, the lake might to be drained to eliminate the danger of flooding if the dam gave way. Since that time, the HLHA has been working to save the lake, a popular spot in the Elm Ridge Park development.
Hopewell Township Administrator/Engineer Paul Pogorzelski said the plan is for the HLHA to use the loan money to bring the dam up to the safety standards of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). He said the DEP will design the upgrade to the dam.
"Hopewell Township will guarantee to the DEP Loan Program that the HLHA will perform according to the loan award and will maintain the dam according to DEP criteria going forward," Mr. Pogorzelski said.
In a March 2010 Hopewell Valley News account, it was stated that Honey Lake was constructed in 1964 as a desilting basin through a Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association project.
By 2010, the dam had been identified as "high hazard" by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Dam Safety and was "in need of rehabilitation to comply with current safety requirements."
On July 5, 2011, the Hopewell Township Committee voted unanimously in favor of a resolution opposing the decommissioning of the dam that created Honey Lake.
Mr. Pogorzelski said the resolution was the committee’s response to being told by the National Resource Conservation Center that plans to decommission the dam were underway.
Early that year, after learning decommissioning of the dam was a possibility because it had been deemed a "high hazard dam" by the state Department of Environmental Protection, township officials and residents of Elm Ridge Park opposed to the decommissioning began conferring with the DEP, the NRCS and the Mercer County Soil Conservation District, which owns the dam.
Copies of the township’s resolution were to be sent to all federal, state and county agencies involved with the future of the dam.
Officials said Honey Lake is a vital part of the aquifer that serves wells in Elm Ridge Park. No homes there get public water. All use private wells.
BACK IN FEBRUARY 2007, an account in Packet Media Group archives said:
"The seven dams preventing sediment buildup in Lake Carnegie are nearing the end of their projected 50-year life span and the agency maintaining two of them has decided it can no longer handle their upkeep."
That agency, the Mercer County Soil Conservation District, was scheduled to meet with Mercer County, Hopewell Township and the state Department of Environmental Protection to discuss the situation.
"Because the two dams, which protect Honey Lake and Hunt Lake, are on private property, the landowners may have to assume responsibility for them or face the possibility that they will eventually be removed," officials said then.
"The dams, many of which are in Hopewell Township, are earthen structures that hold back seven artificial lakes: Amwell, Baldwin, Curlis, Rosedale and Willow as well as Honey and Hunt.
"When the dams were constructed in the 1960s, under the federal Watershed Protection and Flood Protection Act of 1954, Mercer County and the DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife agreed to take responsibility for maintenance of all but the two at Honey Lake and Hunt Lake.
"Those two originally became the responsibility of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, a nonprofit group that works to preserve and protect the region drained by Stony Brook and the Millstone River."
However, the DEP’s John Moyle said the "association exercised its right to withdraw from the federal agreement, and the responsibility then passed to the Mercer County Soil Conservation District."