Quarry Closure Plan Heading to Bernards Committee

Eighteen months of hearings on Millington Quarry's plan for "rehabilitating" its property on Stonehouse Road to become usable residential property after quarrying ceases ended on Tuesday night with the Planning Board's partial endorsement for the proposal.

The plan calls for the creation of a 50-acre lake and a meadow area that someday could be turned into a residential neighborhood.

The next step is for the quarry plan to go before the where the governing body can go along with the Planning Board's recommendation, reject the plan or set its own conditions.

Township Mayor Carolyn Gaziano, who also has sat on the Planning Board since the hearings began in November 2011, said she wasn't sure when the plan would be heard by the Township Committee.

Gaziano said the proposal is unlikely to come before the Township Committee at its next meeting, scheduled for May 14, but could be deliberated at the following committee meeting on May 28.

Mark Morgan, one of the attorneys for Millington Quarry, said that the quarry representatives had just received a copy of the resolution following Tuesday's 4-0 approval of the recommendation that will be passed along to the Township Committee.

"We don't have much to say about it," Morgan said on Tuesday night.

The board members who approved the final version of the recommendation, discussed at the March 4 board meeting, included Gaziano, Gwen Gilmore, Randy Santoro and Kevin Orr, whose suggestions in March helped shape the resolution.

Orr said on Tuesday night he would like to see the quarry embrace the elements of the board's recommendation that could move the proposal along before other township officials.