Board considers request for property subdivision
BY DAVE BENJAMIN Staff Writer

JACKSON - Planning Board members have heard initial testimony on an applicant's plan for a three-lot subdivision in the light manufacturing (LM) zone.

The application was submitted by James R. Johnson. Additional testimony has been scheduled for April 7.

The property is on Patterson Road near the intersection of Route 526.

Because a new road is being proposed, the application is classified as a major subdivision, where three lots are usually classified as a minor subdivision, Planning Board engineer Douglas Klee explained.

Klee said this application, if approved, will only create the lots and the new road. Future plans for the use of each conforming lot will have to come before the board. Aletter from the Environmental Commission stated that there is contamination on the site which the board should consider and the applicant has to address, he said.

Attorney Ray Shea, representing the applicant, said, "No improvements of any kind are being sought at this time. This is just a subdivision."

Project engineer William Stevens said the property that is the focus of the application runs along Patterson Road. He said there is an existing nursery to the north and a steel manufacturing facility to the south of the property.

"Interstate 195 is just to the north and Route 526 is just to the south," Stevens said. "The property is in the LM zone. These are three existing lots, which are very long and very narrow."

The aim of the applicant is to divide the three lots into three conforming lots to allow for a more useful footprint, he said.

Stevens said the application was previously approved, bonds were posted and construction on the site had commenced, but was not completely finished. The proposed lots are 4.28 acres, 6.17 acres and 4.45 acres in size, where 3 acres are required.

Stevens said the applicant will construct a new road off Patterson Road to replace the gravel that is there now.

Environmental scientist Ian Borden responded to questions regarding Patterson Road, which was listed as a toxic site.

Borden explained that in 1984 the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) opened a criminal investigation which continued through 1989. The investigation determined that an individual was found to be dumping waste from Pennsylvania. He said that individual is still incarcerated.

With further investigation, Borden said, the dumping was found to have occurred on the other side of the road and not on the side where the applicant's lots are located.

Borden said the DEP's water testing results made later were inconclusive. He said that in 2002 the federal Environmental Protection Agency did its own ground water sampling and found trace amounts of pesticides in the soil samples, but not in the ground water samples.

"During the investigation Jackson also submitted a request to the DEP in 2002 for redevelopment of the site, but there was no further activity involved," Borden said.

The site today remains in the toxic files and nothing has been done with it, he said.

"We're not proposing anything tonight [except] to re-establish a subdivision that gives the applicant the right to come back in and try to create more commercial or industrial ratables," Shea said. "Tonight all I am asking for is to re-establish the lot lines on the ground."

The board will hear additional testimony on this application at its April 7 meeting.

In other business, a hearing on the application for Diamond Developers atMiele farms, a 315-home subdivision on South Hope Chapel Road, has been moved to June 2.