This presentation below during the public portion was recorded by Neptune Township, and an audio copy of that meeting is available at the Township Clerk’s office:
The Shark River and Wesley Lake are both estuaries located in Neptune Township.
They should not be used to collect street water runoff because that is what causes them to become polluted, killing the lake’s ecosystem and then draining the polluted water into the ocean to wash up on the beach.
All of New Jersey’s coastal lakes, shoreline, and estuaries are within the over 1,370 square mile New Jersey coastal zone, and all of this land is held in trust by the state and reserved for recreation and conservation. That is what draws people to the Jersey Shore.
Any land that is now or has ever been flowed by the tides are “tidelands,” and the state has claimed ownership of these tidelands since 1776 even if the land has been filled in and developed.
The same tideland rules that apply today were in place when New Jersey was an English colony.
In the past, with the vast amount of individual lots in the coastal zone, it was not easy for the state, or title insurance underwriters to determine exactly what specific parcels of land (or part of) were claimed to be owned by the state. As a result, many properties that were owned by the state were subdivided, purchased, developed, and sold again without ever having a tidelands grant attached to the deed, even though the land was, and still is, owned by the state.
This could be a problem for the current property owner because technically you cannot buy or sell something you do not own.
In an effort to make information on this matter available to the public, on March 5 a real estate broker from Oliver Brothers Realtors hosted a “Tidelands and Tidelands Claims” presentation at the Neptune Township marina where Ocean Grove attorneys Jeff and Chris Beekman made a very informative and accurate presentation on the history of the state’s claim to tideland ownership in the Shark River Hills section of Neptune Township.
Of course the same tideland rules that apply to the Shark River also apply to Wesley Lake because over the years about one third of the original size of the lake, its banks, and watershed, have been filled in and developed, much like the Shark River area.
Asbury Park has hundreds of parking spaces on their bank of Wesley Lake. It now becomes clear that the name change of Wesley Lake,” on the Neptune Township tax map, to “Wesley Detention/Retention Basin,” without a Committee resolution, may have happened as the result of both towns discovering that Neptune and Asbury Park are not the co-owners of Wesley Lake as they are claiming, but rather the State of New Jersey is.
So my question is, Mayor, does Neptune Township have:
a. a riparian grant from the DEP, or
b. a tidelands grant, or
c. a lease agreement with the DEP
d. or any other agreement with the state that shows the transfer of ownership of Wesley Lake from the state to Neptune Township and/or Asbury Park?
This concluded Jack Bredin’s remarks to the Committee. The Committee response is as follows:
Mayor Carol Rizzo (who turns to the Business Administrator Vito Gadaleta)
Vito Gadaleta: “We will have to research it.”
Jack Bredin: “I would like an opinion from our attorney.”
Gene Anthony, Township Attorney: “We will have to research it.”
Mayor Carol Rizzo: “We will have a discussion to decide if we will discuss it.” (Editor: It’s comedy time)
The next speaker was Richard Williams, Vice President of the OGHOA who said, “I believe Mr. Bredin deserves an answer to his question.”
JACK JOHNSON AND THE WALLFLOWERS. “Talk of the Town.”
Jack: ……and also, if Neptune gets away with this misappropriation of Wesley Lake, and the developers save a ton of money, the Lake, left without remediation, will suffer from worsening pollution and silt buildup—an ecologic nightmare much worse than the other coastal lakes around here which do not have the huge groundwater runoff problem that Wesley Lake has.
Mr Bredin misses the most important point. Neptune’s attorneys and planners knew that the more than two acres of Wesley Lake did not belong to either the OGCMA or Neptune to use when establishing the North End Area in Need of Re-development.
In other words, Neptune has been pulling a major scam against the residents of OG.
The NJ Courts would consider this a serious felony and it must be delt with in the courts.
Kevin Chambers
The point of all this is:
There is a schedule of fees to be paid when a developer files for ‘site plan approval’ anywhere in NJ.
For any areas that drain street water into a waterway, whether it’s a general development, or an area in need of re-development, an additional fee can and should be added to the schedule of fees to be paid for any necessary off site improvements. In this case a detention basin.
In the case of Wesley Lake, the local government is trying to steal a lake from the state government to be used as a detention basin that will save developers millions of dollars.