The Marlboro Planning Board voted last Wednesday night to deny a developer’s application to build a large-scale affordable housing project due to environmental constraints. In particular, the Board expressed concerns over the stormwater system proposed to service the runoff on the property.
According to State law concerning runoff, a stormwater system must absorb all of the runoff generated from development onsite. In this particular case, the developer conceded that only about half of the water was going to be recharged according to the plan submitted to the Board. It should be noted that the original design contained no recharge at all, and that after members of the community complained, the new proposal only recharged approximately fifty percent.
Lieberman Blecher & Sinkevich represented the community organization that opposed this project. The firm first won a motion to intervene in the project, and then vigorously participated by hiring appropriate stormwater experts and cross-examining the applicant’s experts. Peggy Snyder of the firm Emerald Environmental services in Pennington served as the expert retained by Lieberman Blecher & Sinkevich in this case.