By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The Princeton Battlefield Society asked a federal judge this week to partially halt the construction of Institute for Advanced Study housing on land where the Revolutionary War battle occurred.
Attorney Bruce I. Afran, the lawyer for the Battlefield Society, said Tuesday that an injunction request was filed late Monday night with Judge Freda L. Wolfson, sitting in Trenton. She is the same judge hearing a lawsuit that the Society filed about two months ago claiming violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
In particular, the Society wants the judge to stop work on an area that has an “ecologically important” wetland and where townhouses are due to go.
“We ask that the court compel the Institute to stop all activities that adversely affect the wetland or would make it more difficult to restore this wetland to its condition prior to the Institute’s actions at the construction site,” Battlefield Society president Jerry Hurwitz said in a statement.
Mr. Afran said he could not predict how the judge might rule at a hearing that is expected to take place May 16, although that court date might change.
The IAS intends to build 15 units of faculty housing on land that the Battlefield Society says the battle of Princeton was fought in January 1777. The IAS-owned property is adjacent to Princeton Battlefield State Park, on Mercer Road.
For its part, the IAS had no comment Tuesday on this latest legal maneuver by the Battlefield Society, other than to point to past statements it has made and a letter the state Department of Environmental Protection issued in January. The DEP said then that the project is “not encroaching on or otherwise disturbing any regulated wetlands or transition areas.”
Mr. Afran said there is a wetland on the property, and that the DEP confirmed as much.
