DEP to hold public hearing on Milly’s Court

The New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection will hold a virtual public hearing on May 6 at 10 a.m. on a proposal to extend sewer service to Milly’s Court’s 261 residential units, which several groups say would stress the borough’s water supply.

The New Jersey Highlands Coalition, the Wallkill Headwaters Association with the Eastern Environmental Law Center and Princeton Hydro will host an open community webinar on Wednesday.

The DEP on Feb. 7 published a notice that Milly’s Court is seeking to amend the Sussex County Water Quality Management Plan, a requirement to extend sewer service to the proposed the development.

The municipoal water supply already is in deficit of 754,000 gallons per day, and a recent borough-contracted hydrology report confirmed municipal wells are underperforming and are already at risk.

After the Franklin Borough Planning Board denied the project because it violated the borough’s steep slope ordinances and because of various environmental impacts, Milly’s Court filed three lawsuits against the borough, including a builder’s remedy lawsuit. The borough entered into a court supervised settlement discussion with Milly’s Court, which resulted in a slight reduction in the number of units. The Court required the Planning Board have a final hearing on the revised site plan, but the Planning Board would be required to approve the project, no matter if there were any credible concerns expressed by the public at the Planning Board hearing. The Planning Board approved the amended site plan in December 2019.

However, the project cannot go through without state approval and the Milly’s Court site said to be home to eleven threatened and endangered species. Half of the Milly’s Court parcel is inside of the Ogdensburg Meadow Natural Heritage Priority Site, home to a globally critically imperiled wetland ecological community, and a concentration of state critically imperiled and rare plant species. The Highlands Council has determined that the subwatershed in which the Milly’s Court development is proposed is in a deficit of 754,000 gallons per day. This is the same subwatershed in which Franklin Borough’s municipal wells are located.