Wednesday, December 16, 2009
By HOLLY STEWART
COLUMNIST
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give. – Charles Caleb Cotton
Anyone who's hiked the Wyanokies in Wanaque and Bloomingdale knows about Saddle Mountain. Fans of the Hewitt-Butler Trail and the pathways near Weis Ecology Center on Snake Den Road in Ringwood know about it, too. For more than a decade, area woods enthusiasts have had to change plans and repurchase maps because the Saddle Mountain property owner declared former trails to be off-limits to trespassers. Their routes have had to be changed and the dreaded "KO" designation (for "Keep Out") appears on the maps now instead.
However, hikers aren't the only ones who've been inconvenienced. Residents on and near West Brook Road in West Milford, Ringwood and Wanaque say that Saddle Mountain's owner has not been a good neighbor to them. They cite excessive noise, possible pollution and damage to local infrastructure as their primary complaints. Who can get away with such offenses regularly, you might ask? Apparently a quarry can, especially if it is owned by a well-known area family with a full-time lawyer at their disposal.
Scott Braen purchased Saddle Mountain in 1990 from Van Orden Sand and Gravel, and the facility still operates under that name. Their license has been renewed repeatedly without issue; the last time a formal complaint was brought to the Township of Ringwood was 2004. However, nearly 60 residents of the Stonetown area signed a petition that was presented to the Borough Council last month in which they requested further regulation of quarry operations. Specific concerns address damage done to the West Brook Bridge by dump trucks running heavy loads from the quarry and an oft-ignored mandate that the quarry not operate below an elevation of 370 feet, which is also the level of West Brook Road. It is believed that excavation below that level could pollute ground water in the area.
Inexplicably, a consent order executed in 1996 allows the quarry to operate below that height anyway. And although Saddle Mountain's license expired in June of this year, the Borough Council continues to grant 60-day temporary extensions to this, citing a need for further review by the council and offering the quarry administration time to gather requested documents necessary for full relicensing. The council wants a written explanation on why excavation below 370 feet is necessary. Quarry lawyer Jerome Vogel believes those papers were presented the last time Saddle Mountain applied for relicensing, in 2004; he sees no need for them to be brought forth again.
Vogel has also been firm on this point: Suspension of operations below the 370-foot mark will result in immediate legal action against the Borough of Ringwood. And that is the saddest part of this tale of quasi-noncompliance: Council members are afraid to vote against the quarry for fear of fiscal annihilation. They're being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Basically, they approved yet another 60-day extension on the quarry's temporary license last week so that they wouldn't have to face the burden of legal costs associated with a rebuttal from Saddle Mountain.
A primary progressive posit: Change is always initially more expensive than the status quo, but in the end it can actually save money. And that's what the folks who run Ringwood should really be thinking about right now. If the quarry continues to operate below the level of West Brook Road and the groundwater is contaminated, who's going to pay to clean it up? If the West Brook Road Bridge has to be closed for extensive repairs because it wasn't built to withstand multi-ton traffic on a regular basis, who's going to pay the damages? The long-term implications of the quarry's operations need to be considered, and not just as a knee-jerk reaction to a potentially looming lawsuit. The concerns of five dozen area residents should be seriously considered as well.
With the borough straddling a barrel in the midst of recession, Saddle Mountain's got the upper hand in this fight. And while the company certainly retains the right to continue operations, it should be willing to be a better neighbor after nearly two decades of profit-taking from the land. Instead, the company comes across as aggressively defensive at every juncture. If Ringwood officials had considered at the outset how out of place an operating quarry would be amongst these residential hilltops, they might have saved themselves a lot of trouble. But it's too late for that now. Like the rest of us, the Ringwood Borough Council can only hope to plan for a better future with clear heads, sharp eyes and a minimum of legal actions.
The next quarry relicensing hearing is slated for Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 8 p.m. in the Ringwood Borough Hall.
E-mail: hollyennist@gmail.com.