Brick Township has submitted its disappointing plan for the park at Traders Cove to DEP’s CAFRA for approval. This site is the only place you’ll find it on the Internet.
Save Barnegat Bay has posted the TRADERS COVE PARK PLAN on the Internet in pdf form. Use the percentage control on your toolbar to observe in closer detail.
You can help: Write DEP to ask for a Public Hearing:
Division of Land Use Regulation
P.O. Box 439
Trenton, New Jersey 08625-0439
In your letter please point out that parks are for the people and that this park needs far more public participation before a CAFRA permit is approved. Ask for a public hearing, in Brick, on a weekday evening.
Save Barnegat Bay will be writing our CAFRA comments and publishing them on this website.
Among the disappointing features:
– The number and size of the boat slips is not given, which makes the plans impossible to sensibly evaluate.
– Most of the parking is on the water, which cuts the public off from a good waterfront experience.
– The west side of the property, which needs to be Wildlife Refuge compatible, is intensively developed with a trailer-able boat ramp, a travel lift facility, a boat washing facility, and a pump out station. All of these facilities should be on the Bay side of the park, which is where the boat slips are. That way the wildlife will not be disturbed.
– Drainage that could have been sent into the Bay on the east side is instead sent into the west lagoon, where it will stagnate in waters owned by the federal Wildlife Refuge.
– There are too many hard, artificial surfaces, including a paved driveway, a paved parking area, a concrete peripheral walkway, and a very large rubberized childrens’ playground surface instead of something natural.
– There are too many walls and fences.
– There is no kayak and canoe launch.
– There is no nature trail kiosk or entrance on this plan, nor is there room to build on in the future.
– Very few native plantings are used.
– For safety purposes the entrance should be widened and moved west toward the location of the existing entrance.
Save Barnegat Bay put over one million Green Acres dollars into this project. Instead of using those million dollars, Brick Township allowed the funds to lapse and instead used money from their own taxpayers. If Brick did not want the money, Save Barnegat Bay would have liked to have used it for land conservation elsewhere. Instead Brick allowed it to default to the State of New Jersey.
Save Barnegat Bay expected to be consulted on this plan prior to its submission to the State for approval, but was not. In September 2009, at the one public hearing held by the township, most of the failings described above were not revealed.
