Price of dredging private lake in Wayne irks some
$3.1M bond ordinance proposed to fund project
By: Philip DeVencentis
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
WAYNE - An estimated 16,000 tons of silt is due to be remove form Packanack Lake this fall [2024] under a longstanding settlement between the association that manage a private club and the township, which has to pay for the dredging.
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The settlement dates to a March 1975 court case in which the association sued the township to stop it from moving forward with a drainage project about 1 1/2 miles north. At the time, the private club felt that nay upstream disruption would harm the water quality of the manage lake.
..... years later, people who live there are still advancing that argument.
.... "The damage that has been done has been done for decades," said Councilwoman Jill Sasso, who also sits on the Packanack Lake board of directors.
..... Her remarks were made at the most recent meeting of the Township Council in support of a $3.1 million bond ordinance to fund the dredging project.
..... The council will hold a public hearing on the ordinance at its meeting Wednesday. [09/04/2024]
..... Sasso said the township has not always lived up to its end of the court settlement. Because of that,s he said, the silt problem has gotten worse. "I don't like the dollar figure, either," she said, "but it's required - it's obligated, and it's necessary."
..... Councilman Jonathan Ettman and Al Sadowski objected to the cost of the dredging project when the riddance was introduced. They said the administration should see if the township could sever its nearly 50-year-old pact with the association.
..... Sadowski said he did not believe that all of the silt at the lake bottom was put there by the township.
..... "This doesn't sit well with me in a number of ways," he said. "I don't understand why taxpayers, who are already overburdened, are on the hook for a private lake."
..... Ettman pointed out that most of those residents are not in the exclusive club.
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"Taxpayers are spending money to remedy this issue, but unless you live at the lake," he said, "you're not even allowed to dip your toe in it."
..... The lake was last dug out in the fall of 2012.
..... At the time, the dredging project took 2 1/2 months, said Mayor Christopher Vergano. More than 500 truckloads of waterlogged gunk were hauled away, he said.
..... "You have an obligation to proceed with this project," he said to council members before they introduced the ordinance. "You have an obligation to do this - it's plain and simple. I don't like spending taxpayers' money, but I don't see a way around this."
..... the drainage project at issue between officials and the private club involved Tom's Lake, a public swimming facility on Concord Place. The township planed to pipe unfiltered storm-water between it and Packanack Lake, but a judge would not allow that work to occur without a proper filtration system.
..... As a result of the court settlement, and an amendment approved between the parties in October 1998, officials must now check slit levels at 15 spill location's aorta the lake, and at its east and west inlets - or "fingers" - every other year.
..... The township is then supposed to dredge the lake when sediment is within a certain depth of the water surface.
..... "If we don't do this," said township Attorney Matthew Giacobbe, advising the council, "we'll be in court." Unless officials can identify "another culprit" that is causing silt to accumulate at the lake bottom, he said, "We will not prevail.
..... "We'll lose," he said, and "you'll be forced to do it."