Spring 2023 Issue

Lake Commission Committee
Getting Positive Results
6
Story by MICHAEL DAIGLE
Photos by KAREN FUCITO
Roxbury homeowner Chris Blanton
learned about the Lake Hopatcong
Commission’s Land Use Committee the day it
objected to his house building project.
That’s probably not an uncommon
experience, since the little-known committee
works quietly in the background of the greater
lake-wide effort to clean up the troubled lake.
For Blanton, his experience with the
committee eventually resulted in a lake-friendly
solution that will allow him to move forward
with building a 2,400-square-foot home on
Kingsland Road on the peninsula located on
the western shore of Landing Channel.
The new plans show a dry well that will trap
runoff from the driveway and “a rain garden to
filter water running off the hill,” said Blanton.
The encounter was cooperative, he added.
“We support efforts to clean up the lake, and
we are willing to do our part.”
Committee member Robert Tessier said
Blanton’s experience is common.
“We try to offer site-specific solutions,” he
said. “We try for recommendations that make
common sense.”
The committee has been in existence since
2020 when Ron Smith, commission chairman,
urged the members to create means by which
the commission could better meet its state
mandate to protect Lake Hopatcong.
Lake commission minutes show that Smith
urged commission members to be more active
in their supervision of activities across the
towns of Jefferson, Mount Arlington, Roxbury
and Hopatcong.
The timing was critical. For the previous
three years the commission had struggled with
funding and a loss of sense of direction and
effectiveness. The call for renewed activism
on the part of the commission members came
just months before a harmful algal bloom
effectively closed the lake for the summer of
2019.
Tessier, a project manager for the state
Department of Community Affairs, was asked
by the Community Affairs commissioner to fill
the slot on the Lake Hopatcong Commission
for a DCA representative. He has been a
commission member for six years. Other
members on the committee, who volunteer
their time, are commissioners Ryan Gilfillan,
Anne Seibert-Pravs, Neil Senatore and Fred
Steinbaum.
“Our function [the Lake Hopatcong
Commission Land Use Committee] is to
review development applications and make
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Spring 2023
recommendations,”
Tessier said. “Our
recommendations
are advisory.” The
committee is not an
enforcement agency.
The 2001 law that
created the lake
commission, The Lake
Hopatcong Protection
Act, is explicit in its
definition of the
commission’s duties: The
commission is charged
with conducting “water
quality and water
quantity monitoring of
Lake Hopatcong to assess
conditions and changes
thereto over time and
identify the causes and
sources of environmental
threats and impacts
to Lake Hopatcong
and its watershed.”
And, it should assess
“present and projected
development, land use,
and land management
practices and patterns,
and determine the
effects of those practices and patterns upon
the natural, scenic, and recreational resources
of Lake Hopatcong and its watershed.”
So charged, Tessier said, the committee
generally examines applications from properties
that are within 200 feet of the shoreline and
most often focus on development choices
that affect stormwater runoff, a major cause of
lake pollution.
After reviewing an application, Tessier said,
the committee writes a letter of support
or concern to the property owner and the
municipal board reviewing the application.
The process has gotten smoother, he said.
At first there was some local objection to an
outside agency moving in on local matters. As
awareness has grown about the importance of
the regional effort to better manage the lake,
the committee’s recommendations have been
better received.
“The committee is having a positive effect,”
Tessier said.
Ken Nelson is a professional planner and was
hired by the commission to review land use
applications filed in the towns. After the review,
Nelson writes a letter for each application and
informs the municipal board and the applicant
of the committee’s approval or disapproval of
the application. In the letters, Nelson said, the
From top, left to right: Chris and Ayla
Blanton stand in what will be a rain garden
on their property on Kingsland Road in
Landing.
A copy of the Blanton property site plan,
including a rain garden at the shoreline
(top).
Robert Tessier gives a Land Use
Committee update at the April Lake
Hopatcong Commission meeting.
committee outlines its objections and suggests
remedies.
Chief concerns, he said, are applications that
seek certain variances related to the amount
of impervious (hard) surfaces on the lot or the
size of the building compared to the size of
the lot.
The increasing size of homes being built
around the lake is a concern, he said.
The committee often recommends the
use of different materials for driveways—
permeable surfaces rather than solid asphalt,
for example. The committee also recommends
adding dry wells, swales and rain gardens to
control and filter runoff, Nelson said.
The changes are generally low-cost solutions,
he added.
The committee reviews two to four
applications a month.
Smith said the Land Use Committee’s efforts
are an important piece in the commission’s
plans to improve and maintain the quality of
the lake water.
Its success in presenting project changes