By JOHN T. WARD

Mark Lockwood spent the night on his boat at the Shrewsbury River Yacht Club in Fair Haven Friday, and woke to the sight of a Navesink River gone brown. The worst kind of brown, he thought.

Though it didn’t smell, it appeared to be human waste, he said.

“It was disgusting,” he told a Fair Haven police officer who’d come to the club to investigate Saturday evening. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been on this river all my life.”

Ben Hamilton, whose home abuts the club property, said he had never seen anything like it, either.

But whatever they saw, it wasn’t from the town’s sanitary sewer, said an official with the regional sewerage authority that serves the borough. And it may have been pollen.

“We can guarantee that the Two Rivers Water Reclamation Authority pipe isn’t leaking,” TRWRA commissioner and yacht club member Bill Baarck told redbankgreen Saturday night, referring to a waste pipe that runs just beneath the Navesink River shore from Gillespie Avenue east to the yacht club, where it meets a pumping station.

“But we can’t guarantee that tides and winds haven’t brought in pollutants from elsewhere, over which we have no control,” he said.

Though he said he had not seen the brown tide himself, other recent reports of human waste — one on the Metedeconk River, and one at a location he could not immediately recall —  turned out to be vast collections of dead pollen on the water, Baarck said.

An authority inspector investigated the Navesink report and found no sign of leakage along the beach, either from the buried pipeline or the several manhole-topped access holes along its length, he said.

The entire stretch of pipe, which is about 40 years old, is scheduled to be replaced soon, with heavy construction equipment slated for delivery to the beach via the yacht club’s ramp as early as Monday. Baarck said the work is preventative.

Mayor Ben Lucarelli tells redbankgreen that a recent video inspection of the pipe found river water infiltrating the system at the foot of Gillespie Avenue, but that no sewage was getting into the river.

“It’s in weak condition,” Baarck said, and was one reason the authority sought and obtained state Department of Environmental Protection permits to replace the piping with a new system.

The new pipes will be laid next the existing pipes and, when completed, a cut-over from old system will be scheduled for the middle of the night to prevent any waste from getting into the river, he said.

Lockwood and Hamilton said the brown stuff appeared to have come from the west, based on Saturday’s winds. Baarck said that while the authority ruled out the Fair Haven system as its source, he could not rule out the possibility that it had come from the Red Bank system.

Lockwood and other club members said they sometimes see post-storm waste from the Middletown side of the river, where mansions along Navesink River Road are not hooked into a sewer and rely instead on septic tanks. But Saturday’s brown blob was far larger, they told redbankgreen.

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank’s streets are about to be abloom in yellow, and not solely from the spring return of the forsythia.

The town is giving away more than 2,200 bright yellow recycling bins to borough residents in an effort to create some identifiable uniformity to the re-use effort.

Town officials began giving the 20-gallon, lidded barrels out to senior citizen residents several weeks ago, and have now widened the availability to all residents, Maria Rotolo of the public utilities office tells redbankgreen.

To obtain one, residents have to call the department at 732-530-2773 or visit the office, on Chestnut Street opposite the armory ice rink. Residents have the option of picking up the barrels or having them delivered. The town will also remove any old containers that residents had been using for recycling, Rotolo said.

The barrels come at no direct cost to residents. A $17,925 grant from the Monmouth County Solid Waste Advisory Council covered the cost of the first 1,500 barrels, and the public utilities department pulled $8,800 from its budget to pay for an additional 726, said director Gary Watson.

While the total 2,226 barrels is fewer than the 3,000 single-family households in town, “not everybody wants one,” Rotolo said. “We’ve had people tell us they don’t want one, for whatever reason.”

Red Bank uses single-stream collection of recyclables, in which paper, plastic, glass and aluminum is picked up together and sorted afterward. Here’s some info on that: Red Bank Single Stream

By JOHN T. WARD

An opponent of a planned hotel at the foot of the Route 35 Cooper’s Bridge made his fullest case yet Thursday night that the building violates Red Bank’s height limits.

But after two slow-moving, trial-like hearings before the town zoning board, the lawyer for the hotel has barely begun to put on his defense, and no resolution of the dispute is likely for at least another month.

James Freeman, an engineering consultant and witness for objector Stephen Mitchell, identifies the proposed hotel site on an aerial photo. (Click to enlarge)

In one of the more bizarre building requests to confront town officials in recent years, Rbank Capital LLC’s plan for a six-story, 72-room Hampton Inn hotel is the subject of two simultaneous hearings, both involving the same opposing lawyers and battalions of engineers and land-use experts.

The first, underway at the planning board since August, concerns whether the hotel can be built as described.

The other, at the zoning board, is solely about the interpretation of the height restriction in the waterfront development zone in which the hotel property lies, and ultimately, whether the planning board is in fact the proper venue for the plan.

The matter is critical because zoning boards are generally believed by land use experts to present tougher hurdles for applicants.

Stephen Mitchell, of Prospect Avenue, maintains that the hotel violates the zone’s height limit, defined as 50 feet above the nearby Navesink River at a point on a line drawn between the river and the nearest street parallel to the river.

Through his lawyer, Ron Gasiorowski, Mitchell also contends that because of an error by borough Engineer Christine Ballard, of T&M Associates, in applying the ordinance a year ago, the case was improperly sent to the planning board.

With his fees being paid by a previously undisclosed hotel-owning group out of Tinton Falls, Gasiorowski called two witnesses Thursday night – engineer James Freeman and planner Gordon Gemma – who testified that while the ordinance is vague on some of its terms, the Hampton Inn, at 82.25 feet above the nearby Navesink River, exceeds the height limitation by more than 32 feet.

Gemma said he examined the town’s 1995 master plan, as well as a waterfront “vision plan” that preceded it, for guidance on  the intent of the ordinance.

Clearly, he told the board, “the purpose of what you wanted to do was to make sure that there weren’t big buildings that close to the river. The whole point is to have a step-back from the river” to enable passersby to enjoy the sight of the river.

Noting that a corner of the proposed hotel is bisected by a line drawn between Rector Place – one of only four streets named in defining the landward edge of the zone – and the rive, Gemma testified: “That portion of the building that is above 50 feet doesn’t belong there.”

Hampton Inn lawyer Marty McGann, whose verbal clashes with Gasiorowski have previously been a hallmark of the planning board hearings and have continued here, drew a loud objection from his adversary when he suggested that Freeman had “willy-nilly, without any basis or semblance of authority,” chosen where to measure the height of the hotel.

Gemma has already been tripped up on his testimony twice: once, by Ballard, after he said that in the ordinance, “height” and “elevation” are synonymous, and later by McGann, who challenged Gemma’s assertion that he had attended all of the planning board hearings on the matter. Pressed under cross-examination, Gemma acknowledged that his may have missed “one or two” of the hearings.

The zoning board hearing was scheduled to continue April 19.

By JOHN T. WARD

Over the concerns of environmentalists, Red Bank will pursue grant funding for a ‘sprayground‘ in a riverside marsh that could end up costing $500,000.

A vote by the borough council Wednesday night to authorize a bid for a Monmouth County Open Spaces grant of $250,000, which the town would have to match, followed heartfelt appeals by West Side parents for a place for children to play and by others concerned about illicit activity in the overgrown Bellhaven Nature Area, at the western end of Locust Avenue.

“Our children on the West Side have nowhere to go,” River Street’s Rose Sestito, a mother of five and foster mother of three, told the governing body during a public hearing on the grant question. “Please consider the children.”

The council’s unanimous greenlight for Engineer Christine Ballard to file for the grant came as the town faced a September 9 deadline for doing so. The county freeholders customarily announce the annual grant awards at their final meeting of the year, in December.

“This does not commit the borough to do anything other than applying for the grant,” said Mayor Pasquale Menna, adding that if the grant is obtained, public hearings on detailed plans for the site would be held.

At present, the Bellhaven property, created as a nature area eight years ago adjacent to what was the kennel where Hollywood’s Lassie collies were trained and is now the site of the Bellhaven Commons condos, is meant to function as an open-air learning center, featuring a pathway lined with placard describing natural flora, fauna and the workings of marshes in cleaning river water.

But the site is overrun with hard-to-eradicate phragmites, an invasive reed that naturalist Kathleen Gasienica, who lives in the condo project, said can have roots as deep as 35 feet and emerges from the muck with a spearlike tip that easily cuts even through concrete.

The phragmites also block river views, and provide cover for illicit drinking, drug use and sex believed to take place at night. “We have our share of drinkers down there, amongst many other things,” said Councilman Art Murphy, who serves as police commissioner.

“I live across the street from the water, and I can’t see it” because of the overgrowth, said Leigh Kremer.

But the area has never been properly maintained, and should be kept as wild as possible, said preservationists. While she said she welcomed the newfound attention to the spot, “I question whether any kind of playground with any kind of surface should be put there,” Gasienica said.

“The plan as originally conceived never got a chance to be implemented,” said Tom Williams, who serves as vice chairman of the zoning board. “I just don’t think this is the appropriate area” in which to build a sprayground, he said.

The borough Environmental Commission has also come out as opposed to the plan.

“This is just a grant application,” Ballard told the audience. “This is just a concept.”

Think global, act local: Middletown-based band The Wag is among the Shore area acts taking the main stage at the 36th annual Clearwater Festival, scheduled for August 20.

By TOM CHESEK

“We’re not just putting on a big party each year,” says Ben Forest. “Although of course it is — a party with a purpose.”

Forest, vice president of the Red Bank-based nonprofit NJ Friends of Clearwater — and a man with an irresistibly evergreen, treehug-friendly name — is referring to one of the Shore’s most successful marriages of music and message: the annual Clearwater Festival, the 36th edition of which returns Saturday, August 20.

Red Bankers know Forest as a long-serving member of the borough’s board of ed; as an active voice (with wife Amy Goldsmith) for West Side residents — and as a Mac computer specialist who keeps the often inscrutable machinery of local businesses, schools and media living to fight another day. For nearly a quarter century, he’s been a volunteer and an officer of the local chapter of Clearwater — the organization established in the 1970s as a vehicle for carrying the mission of Pete Seeger’s original enviro-awareness group to the shores of the Raritan Bay and the local Atlantic coast.

Naturally, Forest’s exalted position as Clearwater’s Committee Liaison for Environmental Policy — an office through which he’s been able to bend the ear of governors, members of Congress and the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency — hasn’t prevented him from pulling down duty as a flipper of burgers, collector of trash and de facto roadie during past presentations of the Clearwater Fest. With this year’s free event fast approaching, the predicament — unlike some of the region’s waterways — couldn’t be more clear: Clearwater needs volunteers.

Red Bank’s Ben Forest has spent more than twenty years as a dedicated volunteer and officer of the local Friends of Clearwater. All he has to show for it is this t-shirt AND a formidable track record of raising awareness for causes that impact life here on the Jersey Shore and around the region.

Billed as the Garden State’s largest and longest running environmentally themed festival, the Clearwater event spent many summers at the Fort Hancock area of Sandy Hook before relocating to Asbury Park over a decade ago — and for eight of those years, the fest has made its home within the tree-lined lakeside strip of Sunset Park

It’s there in the shade of a dog-day August 20 that a sonic smorgasbord of regional musical talent will perform on three stages; food vendors from a panorama of green-friendly eateries will offer their wares, strollers will check out a promenade of environment-theme displays, and attendees can clue in to everything from speeches by prominent public figures to silly songs by children’s entertainer Yosi.

According to Forest, volunteer energy is particularly needed with general set-up and breakdown of the event, as well as with clean-up detail, promotion, peacekeeping and other guest services. Volunteers have traditionally been fed at the event, and have been furnished with souvenir t-shirts.

“Our policy is to put on a free event that’s paid for itself in advance,” says Forest of the happening that eliminated admission charges (and scaled back to a single day) two years ago. “We’ve raised enough money for this year — but we’re not in business to go broke putting on festivals, so next year is gonna be a challenge.”

To that end, donations will be welcomed at the scene, during an event that’s characterized not as a fundraiser, but as “open-air music and arts festival celebrating the spirit of people working and singing together for the environment.”

While in-school presentations and monthly meetings are offered throughout the year, this is the flagship moment for the Clearwater-chartered organization founded as Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater — a grass roots, all-volunteer community concern that, as Forest observes, “is now IT for New Jersey, with the disappearance of the old North Jersey and Raritan River chapters.”

Among those working and singing together at the Monmouth County events have been some fairly famous faces and voices — from iconic music legend Levon Helm to Jersey royalty Glen Burtnik, The Smithereens and a particularly anxious-to-play young upstart by the name of Springsteen. To say nothing of the only man the Boss calls boss, festival founder (and sloop skipper) Seeger.

The people-watch ops have also included a range of prominent figures from the political/ public service spectrum — including President Obama’s EPA chief Lisa Jackson (then in her role as the New Jersey DEP director), the Sierra Club‘s Jeff Tittel, Clean Ocean Action‘s Cindy Zipf and members of the state’s congressional delegation, most faithfully Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr.

Guest speakers will be delivering brief presentations on the dedicated theme of the 2011 festival, Climate Change: Rising Seas Closing In — and for the fourth year, an open-air NJ Environmental Justice Panel of “urban and workplace leaders” will convene at 2pm to discuss “environmental issues disproportionately affecting the young and poor people of NJ.”

Although Governor Chris Christie is not expected to be in attendance, Forest has, despite misgivings about several of the gov’s policies and appointments, characterized him as “more accessible on certain green issues than other people — we’ve been able to meet and talk with him on things, although I would have hoped he’d be friendlier on others.”

“Christie’s been painted as being bad on all environmental issues, and that’s simply not true,” says the professed “pro-business liberal” Forest. “He’s really the first governor to do anything about Barnegat Bay — and he’s kept to his campaign stance regarding offshore natural gas.”

Acknowledging that “people don’t come to these things to sit through a series of speeches,” Forest and Friends of Clearwater president (plus fellow Red Bank resident) Joellen Lundy have kept the spotlight on the tunes — with mainstage perfomers including blues guitar champion Matt O’Ree, young keyboard wizard Matt Wade, bluesy chantoozie Jo Wymer, and Middletown’s own The Wag— a powerpop band that lives for the season of outdoor festivals, fundraisers and concerts in the park.

An Acoustic Stage includes sets from Spook Handy, Mary McCrink, Virago and more — while the Circle of Song Stage features more than a dozen local singers and musicians. In addition, a Children’s Area offers activities and live performance by Yosi and others.

“The music gets people to come here, and hopefully the message catches their attention as well,” says Forest. “This really is the best place to be on a warm August day.”

You can volunteer online for any number of tasks at the 2011 Clearwater Festival here — and a full schedule of featured performers and events can be viewed right here. The festival takes place between 11am and 7pm at Sunset Park in Asbury Park (primary entrance is at Main Street and Sunset Avenue).

A longer version of this story appears on Tom Chesek’s blog, Upper WET Side.

A bench at Riverside Gardens Park, where vandalism and littering have been growing problems. Debris in the pole-vault box at Count Basie Fields, below. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

In response to a surge in vandalism on borough property this summer, Red Bank officials are looking into video surveillance as a way to fill gaps in already heightened police presence and serve as a deterrent to would-be scofflaws.

Video could be just one part of a multiprong effort by the borough to curb public defacement and all-around mistreatment of public property, police Captain Darren McConnell said.

Police have stepped up their presence at Riverside Gardens Park in recent weeks, he said. They’re also cracking down on curfew laws for teenagers. And because the council earlier this week called out littering at Count Basie Fields as a growing issue, cops will make rounds there more often.

“The regular patrols will be stepped up quite a bit,” McConnell said. “It’s really only Riverside Gardens Park and Count Basie Fields that are having the issues, and they’re not even the same groups hanging out there, but they get the most use.”

A sampling of litter and defacement in Red Bank, clockwise from left: a vodka bottle at Riverside Gardens Park; a water bottle on Count Basie Fields’ artificial turf field; graffiti on the boardwalk at Riverside Gardens; more trash at Riverside Gardens. (Photos by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

At Count Basie Fields, where nearly $1 million was poured in for turf and other upgrades, there are “serious issues,” Councilman Ed Zipprich said.

There’s trash littering the area, visitors have been using the long-jump landing pit as a sandbox, and there’s been a general disregard for the posted rules, he said. McConnell also said a utility box at the north gate of the park has graffiti on it.

On Wednesday, borough officials said they are going to do what it can to protect what they call one of Red Bank’s prized public areas: increase patrols by police and extra rounds by borough employees.

“We want to be vigilant here and protect our very important asset and investment there,” Zipprich said.

A walk around the park Thursday morning showed a fairly high level of cleanliness, but trash lined small sections around the running track, bottles and caps were scattered around the turf football field and, in the pole vault section, a dirty sock lay baking in the sun.

Since opening the newly turfed fields to the public, some measures taken to protect the multi-field park haven’t been embraced by the public.

Council members caught flak from West Side residents who said the practice of locking the park’s gates after dark unfairly shut them out after years of routine visits early in the morning or after work. At that time, officials pointed out cigarette butts and beer cans as common items found on park grounds.

In recent months, the borough’s dealt with more than just litterbugs in public places.

At Riverside Gardens Park, police have reported more than one incident of vandalism, and park benches and the boardwalk overlooking the Navesink River are tagged with graffiti.

The spray-paint acts have been on the upswing since the warm weather arrived, McConnell said. Police have made at least one arrest for vandalism to a business, back in June. Earlier this month, a jewelry business’s video surveillance caught two teens tagging its back wall.

In the past, the police department’s had the luxury of hiring special officers for extra help in the summer to create a stronger law presence to repel vandals. Budget cuts have taken that off the table.

Now the department is reassigning officers to pay extra attention to “high incident areas.” That’s in addition to posting big maroon-and-white signs stating public park rules at Count Basie and Riverside Gardens, McConnell said, “to try and give that visible presence.”

Police and borough officials have been in discussions to bring video surveillance to those high incident areas — Eastside and Marine parks have not seen the problems others have — so police can monitor the areas from the police station, McConnell said.

Further details on that idea are still being worked out, he said.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

At four bucks a gallon — and more for diesel — the economics of leaving the engine running on a delivery makes little sense. There’s the environmental-damage factor, too.

But members of the Red Bank council, after receiving complaints from tenants downtown, say the fumes from idling delivery trucks are wafting into the above-business dwellings and spoiling sweet spring breezes.

So the governing body, in hope of clearing the air, is directing police to enforce a state law against idling in town, specifically targeting delivery trucks, which Mayor Pasquale Menna said are the main offenders.

“There is no reason on earth if a truck is making a delivery to a restaurant that it keeps (the engine) idling,” he said.

According to state law, adopted in May of last year, no vehicle may keep its engine running longer than three minutes while stopped. Local police have the authority to issue a ticket, which carries a minimum fine of $250, but Menna said the borough isn’t looking to go on a summons spree.

“We don’t want to fine anybody,” he said. “We just want to tell them you can’t idle your engine and, more importantly, you’re just blowing money over to the Middle East.”

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

The controversial flock of ducks of South Woodland Drive will get to stay in Fair Haven, the council decided Monday night.

After a heaping of media coverage and a tense meeting full of complaints by neighbors last month, the decision came down in a much more subdued fashion, with no public input except for one woman advocating to let the family keep the ducks in their backyard.

“So, at this point, it looks like the ducks are here,” Mayor Mike Halfacre said, “with conditions.”

After a brief discussion, the council decided to allow 12-year-old Nikki Vuille to keep her six pet ducks in her South Woodland backyard.

The approval comes with about a half-dozen conditions Vuille and her mother, Dawn Stover, must meet to keep the ducks.

Reacting to concerns from neighbors over sanitary and environmental conditions, the family must keep the ducks in a backyard enclosure — which must be approved by the planning board — and bring the ducks’ food in every night to avoid attracting rats. The family must also clean the ducks’ enclosure every day. There must also be proper screening to keep the enclosure from being an eyesore to neighbors, the council said.

And, no adding to the duck family.

“My duck experts tell me they’re not as hearty as you think, and it may not be six much longer,” Halfacre told Vuille, indicating not all six ducks will survive in domesticated conditions. “And if one goes, you don’t get a replacement duck.”

The council was allowed under the borough’s non-domestic animal ordinance to make a ruling on whether the ducks, which Vuille has raised since they hatched in August, were allowed as pets. This case, Halfacre said, does not open the door for more people to come to the council asking to allow them to have ducks through a “duck waiver.”

“I’m treating this as anomaly,” he said. “When the ducks are gone, the ducks are gone.”

After Stover and Vuille came to the council requesting permission to keep the ducks, the local story caught the eye of larger media outlets, with the Star-Ledger doing two pieces on the controversy and My9 News interviewing Vuille for a small feature. And on Monday night, Vuille, who wore sunglasses to the meeting, stood before a News 12 camera for an interview with a reporter to talk about the controversy.

The council will seek input from neighbors on any conditions it may have missed, and will codify its decision via a resolution within the next month. That will ostensibly put the issue to rest, which is just fine for Vuille.

“I’m very, very happy with their decision because I’d do anything to keep the ducks,” she said. “They’re our family, not just pets.”