HOWELL – Members of the Howell Township Council want to conduct their own traffic study in relation to a proposed solid waste transfer station.
Resource Engineering has proposed constructing a solid waste transfer station at 34 Randolph Road and having the facility added to the Monmouth County Solid Waste Management Plan. The site is near the intersection of Randolph Road and Route 547 (Lakewood-Farmingdale Road).
As described by representatives of the company, the facility would receive thousands of tons of cleanup debris and construction debris by truck each day. The debris would be sorted at the Howell site and shipped to other facilities for final disposal.
During the March 3 meeting of the Township Council, Mayor Theresa Berger said the Howell Green Team was visited during its Feb. 25 meeting by a real estate professional who was promoting the transfer station. She asked who allowed that to happen if the individual was not invited to the meeting.
“If he was asked by someone else to go, we are not sure, but the Green Team did not invite him,” Berger said.
Green Team meetings are open to the public. According to the municipal website, the Green Team “will advise the Township Council on ways to improve municipal operations with ‘green’ initiatives that make practical, environmental and financial sense.”
Berger took issue with with a real estate professional trying to sell the members of the Green Team on moving forward with the transfer station.
“He is a (real estate professional) who is not coming in as a private citizen, but as a real estate (professional),” Berger said.
Deputy Mayor Evelyn O’Donnell said she was at the Green Team meeting in question and asked the individual questions she did not believe he was happy to answer.
“No one in this town wants the dump,” Councilman John Bonevich said of the proposed facility. “We are not a trashing ground for the county. … We requested to do our own traffic study. If we are being bombarded at our meetings with someone trying to spin this (facility) as (being) positive for our town, which I believe it is not, I would like this council to move forward with its own traffic study.”
Berger said she would support Howell conducting a traffic study in connection with the transfer station proposal.
Monmouth County has conducted a traffic study in regard to the proposed project, but the results have not been shared with Howell officials or the public.
Councilman Thomas Russo asked when the findings of the county’s traffic study would be made public.
Township Attorney Joseph Clark said he did not know the answer to that question.
Russo said he would like to know what the county’s findings were before Howell spends money on a traffic study.
Bonevich replied, saying, “I would like to go on the offensive. We are asking for things and not getting them. Let’s do our own (study).”
During the public comment portion of the council meeting, resident Marc Parisi said the county responded to an Open Public Records Act request for the traffic study by stating it “was not finalized, therefore they had no documents responsive to the request and that (the traffic study) will be provided upon completion.”
“For me it is like the county paid for a study, they are getting a chance to the review the study privately to make sure it meets whatever parameters or assumptions they are looking for, and that a reasonably concerned person could sit there and say does this mean (the county is) going to have the opportunity to ask whoever conducted the study to make revisions to make the study conform to whatever they want it to look like?” Parisi said.
Parisi said he supports the idea of Howell conducting its own traffic study.
Resident Kathi Novak told the council members she was at the Green Team meeting when the real estate professional spoke.
“One thing I found very disturbing about that person (was that) he introduced himself, signed his name and said he was there representing Resource Engineering. I asked him his title, he said he was a principal (of the company). At no time did he state he was a (real estate professional). I went home and googled his name and that is how I found out he was a (real estate professional),” Novak said.
She said the individual did not represent himself honestly or transparently.
“It is so disturbing that Monmouth County paid $30,000 for a traffic study and they are not releasing the results, and now we have to look to get our own traffic study. It just seems our government can do better, our county government can do better. It is really disturbing that this (issue of the proposed solid waste transfer station) has been going on since 2015 and I hope it ends soon,” Novak said.
The real estate professional was subsequently identified as Bernie Gutherz, who was reached by the Tri-Town News and confirmed he attended the Feb. 25 Green Team meeting. He said it was not a matter of representing Resource Engineering, but a matter of learning what the Green Team is about.
“I went (to the meeting) to get a better understanding of what the Green Team is and what it does, what actions they take. I gathered they work with Sustainable New Jersey, they work on a point system to implement Sustainable New Jersey actions,” Gutherz said.
Gutherz said the project Resource Engineering has proposed on Randolph Road in Howell is a construction and demolition recycling facility.
“It is very important that when you identify something you use correct language, so when you say waste, to the regular person waste is table scraps from dinner. So identify (the project) correctly for what it is,” he said.
Gutherz said that under the Green Team’s sustainability criteria, the implementation of a recycling facility such as the one being proposed is a recommendation for Sustainable New Jersey points.
“I just wanted to make sure (the Green Team) understood what waste as garbage is and what waste as recycling matter is,” he said.
When asked if he is working with Resource Engineering, Gutherz said he has been involved with the company’s application.
“I work with them, I am helping them through their application, that is pretty much what my role is,” he said, adding that company officials are waiting to learn the results of Monmouth County’s traffic study of the Route 547 and Randolph Road area.