Quarry Resolution On Hold As Special Meeting Cancelled

A special Planning Board meeting that had been scheduled for Tuesday night with one item on the agenda — passage of a resolution outlining the board's recommendation on the Millington Quarry's plans to rehabilitate the facility after closure — has been cancelled.

The next scheduled Planning Board meeting is at 7:30 p.m. next Thursday, April 25. A major item on the agenda that night is the return of the discussion regarding the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge application for a mosque in Liberty Corner, said Planning Board secretary Fran Florio.

However, Florio said that the quarry resolution is not expected to be brought before the board next week.

The Planning Board, after discussing the application, is expecting to pass along a recommendation given preliminary approval in March that the Township Committee approve part of Millington Quarry's post-closure plans for the 179-acre property off Stonehouse Road.

Florio said that the quarry's representatives have granted the board an extension until May 7 to approve a recommendation. The board has a regularly scheduled meeting for 7:30 p.m. on that date in the courtroom at town hall at 1 Collyer Lane.

The Planning Board hearings on the quarry closure plan began in November 2011.

Almost a year and a half of expert testimony, questions and many exhibits led those board members eligible to vote to agree 5-0 to recommend approval of a part of the Millington Quarry's plan for "reclamation."

The boards also attached conditions to some of the parts of the plan that it will recommend that the governing body approve, such as specifying a schedule of water quality testing for a proposed 50-acre lake on the property, which some day is envisioned as a future residential development.

Board Member Kevin Orr outlined reasons why the board should not now include a recommendation of approval for the so-called "meadow" area, which would someday be expected to be developed as two-acre residential sites.

Orr said that the quarry has never specified when all quarrying will cease, changing the calculations of the depth of mined areas and materials brought out and needed to be brought in; and the lack of a plan showing how fill already on the site might be used to reduce truck traffic coming into the site.

"We do not want trucks barrelling down our roadways in our community ever again," Orr said, referring to the era when the quarry was operating full-force and trucks loaded with stone were heading to and from the facility.

Bernards Mayor Carolyn Gaziano, who also will consider the quarry application as part of the Township Committee, was among those members who added conditions to the application.

Gaziano said she wanted to make sure that all soil or other materials brought into the site to make it acceptable for future residential development come only from category one sites without known contaminants. Part of the application also included a procedure for testing any fill brought in to the property.

The high standards should be applied to so-called "rip-rap" stone to be brought into certain areas. Gaziano said she wants to make sure the "rip-rap" becomes construction debris.

Citizens group says plan should have been rejected

Meanwhile, a group of residents, Concerned Citizens for a Safe Millington Quarry, said in a statement at the end of March that the group advocated for the Planning Board to reject the proposed quarry plan and to require the applicant to come back to the Planning Board with a plan that required no more fill. CCSMQ was formed when the township discovered a few years ago that fill testing as contaminated was being brought into the facility, resulting in a moratorium on additional fill at the site.

The fill importation and a request that the state Department of Environmental Protection require testing for contamination followed the Township Committee's rejection of the quarry's last reclamation plan in 2008, the statement from CCSMQ pointed out.

"In the opinion of the Citizens, the proposed plan should further have been rejected as it was premature pending final DEP approval on remediation of the site and a development plan, the proposed plan was  nsupported by an adequate Environmental Impact Statement, and the application lacked sufficient proofs related to the health and safety of the site," the statement said.

The statement said the group is not in favor of the Interim Plan with partial approvals, saying the quarry's application "significant deficiencies in proofs." However, the group's statement said final comment would be reserved until the members have reviewed the Planning Board resolution.

Representatives for the quarry, to health or human safety.