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See DAM
Residents of LeisureTowne, Including Both Former and Current Trustees, Call for Greater Safety, Traffic-Control Measures in Retirement Community
By Douglas D. Melegari
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Staff Writer
SOUTHAMPTON—Some residents of the LeisureTowne retirement community in Southampton Township are calling for greater safety and traffic control measures in the age 55 plus community as speeding is reported to be an ongoing problem there.
Resident Anita Haluszczak, whose Westminster Drive home is close to a temporary digital speed sign that has been posted for the last couple of months on the main thoroughfare in what is considered the back part of LeisureTowne, maintained the displayed speed of drivers “goes up to 40 mph when people pass it.”
The speed limit on Westminster Drive – and on all of the main streets in LeisureTowne for that matter – is 25 mph.
“I was hoping the township could investigate perhaps proper signage, road demarcations, crosswalks and things like that to indicate to drivers they are in 25-mph zone and perhaps alert them to slow down,” Haluszczak told the Southampton Township Committee during a meeting last month.
Township Administrator and Clerk Kathleen D. Hoffman revealed that she had a “request from one of the residents of LeisureTowne” to put striping on Westminster, Huntington and Buckingham drives in LeisureTowne or “enough for there to be like a bike lane” on the main thoroughfares that run through the retirement community, but that such striping “would not be for parking.”
“To me, that has to be a decision that is in conjunction with the (LeisureTowne) Association because you are restricting parking and travel lanes,” Southampton Mayor Michael Mikulski replied. “I am not suggesting that we don’t do it, but I think it needs to be something done in conjunction with the association.”
Committeeman Jim Young, a former mayor of the township for a quartercentury up until 2020, recounted that the LeisureTowne Association had done a survey at one point, with respondents reportedly indicating they “wanted to have a bike lane in there.”
Tom Haluszczak, who is Anita’s husband, and previously served on the LeisureTowne Board of Trustees, pointed out that the “last administration” of the board (with a
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
A newly installed crosswalk on Buckingham Drive in LeisureTowne. The street was still awaiting road striping as of Sept. 14.
See SAFETY/ Page 9
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
One of the logs jammed in the spillway gates of Kirby’s Mill Dam on Sept. 16.
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timeline of events surrounding the described dam hazard.
Late last week, when this newspaper again attempted via email to get answers for the public, Burger, who is also the township clerk, simply re-forwarded a 225page PDF document containing emails and other correspondence that this newspaper had previously obtained through an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request, initially fulfilled by Burger’s office on Sept. 1.
But what is clear from those public records obtained by this newspaper is that municipal officials in the GOP-controlled town, for reasons that have yet to be explained, sat on required repairs to the dam for the past three years, apparently even missing a stateimposed deadline of June 30, 2020, and are only now undertaking them because of a required dam inspection report due to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) later this year.
And in preparing for that inspection, officials conducted a “site visit” on Aug. 8, finding that after not making the repairs initially outlined on Jan. 22, 2020, by Township Engineer Chris Noll, president of Environmental Resolutions, Inc. (ERI), conditions at the dam had gotten much worse, with the mayor later acknowledging Noll is “starting to have some concerns.”
Emails included amongst the public records also show that a required “incident report” when the dam was first damaged See DAM/ Page 7
PUBLIC NOTICE RECORD OF DECISION SIGNED FOR OPERABLE UNIT 4 JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST
The Department of the Air Force and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst announce the signing of a Recordof Decision for Site ST009, Operable Unit 4, located at McGuire. ST009 is approximately 19 acres and is used for bulk fuel storage of heating oil and jet fuel. Environmentalstudies have found impacts to the groundwater from historical releases of jetfuel.Current operations that include regular monitoring, inspections and testing arenot contributing to the historical contamination. The remedy selectedisnaturalsource zone depletion, enhanced by active remediation techniques wherefeasible, long-term monitoring and land use controls. This alternative consists of acombination of naturally-occurring processes that reduce the contamination in the subsurface with enhancements that mayinclude product skimming, thermal enhanced remediation, and/or bioventing.Monitoringand samplingwilloccur to ensure the contamination is not migrating and is undergoing degradation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed the RecordofDecision and the New JerseyDepartmentofEnvironmentalProtection concurredwith the selected remedy.Copies of the RecordofDecision areavailable at the Burlington County Librarylocatedat5Pioneer Blvd., Westampton, NJ; at the NJDEP Records Custodian, 401 East State Street, Trenton, NJ (call in advance of visiting, 609.341.3121); and, at the U.S. EPARegion 2Record Center,18th Floor, 290 Broadway,New York,NY(call in advance of visiting, 212.637.4308). The document can also be viewed on the Air Force’sAdministrative Record website, http://ar.afcec-cloud.af.mil/. Contact the JB MDL Public Affairs Office at (609) 754-2104 for moreinformation.
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
Sandbags temporarily placed near a washout to stabilize the left side embankment of Kirby’s Mill Dam.
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in a flood on June 19-20, 2019, was not completed at the time of the incident, as a township official admitted should have been the case, and in making the admission, suggested that the municipality jeopardized standard reimbursement to make the required repairs. It was also indicated that an item was “supposed” to have been filed with the federal government.
Burger, in a March 4, 2021, email to Richard Parks, director of the Medford Township Department of Neighborhood Services, in attaching a June 28, 2019, estimate from ERI for making repairs to the dam, informed the director that the “insurance paperwork should be completed immediately.”
“I am not sure why an incident report was not completed at that time and forwarded to you,” wrote Parks to Burger the following day.
Parks added in the email to his superior that the emergency management coordinator at the time, Rob Dovi, “had included this with the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) paperwork that we were supposed to submit for reimbursement, however, a formal declaration was never issued.”
The paper trail only picked back up on April 6 of this year when a resident living downstream from the dam had emailed Dovi to report that “it seems like for the past couple of years when it rains, no matter how much, our property floods.”
“It didn’t use to do this before,” she wrote of her observations. “Only when we had a lot of rain in a short period of time.”
The resident, after remarking about her observations, put a question to Dovi, “Is someone new in charge of the dam?”
Dovi, who responded, “I still work with the dam” and adjust it, maintained that he has not needed to lower it much this year, but recognized “I do know that there is a lot of debris in the stream, which may also be causing the water to back up.” He promised to convey the resident’s concerns to the township manager.
About a month later, Noll, as well as fellow ERI engineer Anthony R. Lopez, corresponded about the “Kirby’s Mill estimates,” with a “disaster declaration repair cost estimate” attached to one email. A discussion ensued about two estimates that had been generated for the dam since 2019.
Lopez followed up with Burger on Aug. 10.
“It was brought to our attention that the previous inspection at Kirby’s Mill Dam was completed in 2018,” the ERI engineer wrote to the township manager. “Class III dams must have a regular inspection completed every four years. As such, we have provided a proposal to complete the 2022 inspection at the dam.”
That proposal was for $4,500. However, Lopez urged Burger to move ahead with required, significantly more costly repairs to the dam outlined in a Jan. 22, 2020, letter to the NJDEP, copied to both Burger and Dovi.
“Additionally, myself and Chief Dovi completed a site visit on 8/8/22,” Lopez noted. “Significant erosion is continuing to occur at the dam near the electrical box, which is beginning to undermine the adjacent walkway to the platform used to operate the dam and significantly impact the electrical box concrete base. We did reinstall the safety fencing while we were on site to try to limit access to this area. In order to minimize the need for more costly improvements to the dam in the future, increase site safety and stabilize the eroded areas, the recommendations made within our Jan. 22, 2020, repair design narrative should be implemented as soon as practicable.”
It is unclear whether the township was at all successful in seeking any kind of reimbursement from its insurance carrier, or from FEMA following the apparent belated filing.
But within a couple of days since Lopez’s Aug. 10 correspondence to Burger, the township manager publicly raised the issue of the dam condition to council.
Watson, prior to Burger making the revelation on Aug. 16, announced that the township received $1,224,308.09 from the second round of ARP funding. After deciding to purchase a one-man leaf truck, and to make some other investments, the mayor noted that “brings us a little under $1 million” left to spend of the federal Coronavirus pandemic relief monies.
Watson noted he was aware of a “bunch of stormwater issues” on Eayrestown Road and suggested using some of the funding to make necessary repairs there, describing how standing water often observed on the road freezes during the colder weather in the wintertime. Burger estimated repairs to the road would use up another $100,000 to $200,000 of the federal relief funding.
“We also have a problem at the Kirby’s Mill Dam,” Burger declared. “It is the only dam we own in town, but it is definitely undermining. So, I think we definitely should consider that.”
Watson then asserted that he “thinks we should do both” projects.
“I think that (Eayrestown Road drainage issues) and the Kirby’s Mill Dam are literally hazards to our residents,” the mayor declared. “And I think we should take care of them out of these funds. That is another $350,000 out of there (the relief funds), which brings us down to around $700,000.”
Councilwoman Lauren Kochan, on Aug. 16, asked for some additional time to review the project estimates she had just received from Burger.
“I don’t mind sitting on it, but I think we need to take care of those two things,” Watson replied.
Burger, however, said she would only earmark $500,000 of the federal funding in the interim – and only for the leaf truck and to put towards the municipal budget, while the remainder “will sit” until “further discussion” is had by council.
In response to receiving Noll’s Jan. 22, 2020, letter outlining what needs to be done to fix the Kirby’s Mill Dam, John H. Moyle, director of the NJDEP’s Division of Dam Safety and Flood Engineering, wrote to Burger on April 20, 2020, that he “reviewed” the “letter and associated repair plan dated Jan. 22, 2020,” and “determined that the proposed repairs are acceptable to the division.”
“The proposed repairs should be completed by June 30, 2020,” Moyle wrote to Burger, with the date in bolded lettering.
The public records provided to this newspaper contain no further correspondence from Moyle or to the NJDEP director of dam safety in regard to the Kirby’s Mill Dam.
Lopez, in August of this year, reforwarded to Burger the Jan. 22, 2020, letter outlining what needs to be done to fix the Kirby’s Mill Dam.
“Kirby’s Mill Dam sustained damaged after a localized severe rain event on June 19-20, 2019,” says Noll in the introductory paragraph of the letter. “An inspection was conducted by this office on behalf of the Township of Medford and a repair plan has been prepared. The proposed improvements intend to restore the dam to its previously existing conditions and to provide improvements to the erosion protection and drainage patterns at the dam.”
The first-listed recommended repair is to “install approximately 40 linear feet of asphalt curb extending from the existing pipe located on the north side of Church Road, continuing west adjacent to Church Road and angled northwest into the site adjacent to the existing stone apron.”
Noll explains in the correspondence that “under existing conditions, runoff from See DAM/ Page 11
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
An area of erosion and washout at the downstream left embankment of Kirby’s Mill Dam, surrounded by yellow caution tape and snow/sand fencing.
