By ROBERT LINNEHAN
Following the state department of environmental protections ruling that developer Joseph Samost must pay for the repair of Kenilworth Lake Dam, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Karen L. Suter ordered he pay $845,000 in penalties, according to representatives.
Recently the DEP denied his request to decommission the dam and uninstall the structure. Instead, he will be forced to pay for several repairs to the embattled structure, which has been the center of a controversy since 2004.
Samost owns Kenilworth Dam and nearby Flamingo Dam under a subsidiary called Pine Acres Associates. Both structures were damaged in a storm that wreaked havoc on Burlington County in 2004, bringing 13 inches of rain in the form of a torrential downpour and damaging 30 dams in its path.
Shortly after the storm, a state superior court ordered Samost to drain Kenilworth Lake until there was a plan in place to reconstruct the dam.
The court concluded that failure of the dam could negatively impact downstream area structures, including Kenilworth Road, Braddocks Mill Road, Colony Lake Dam, and about a dozen homes located around the Colony Lake area.
Following the court ruling, the lake was drained but the dam was not repaired.
In his decision, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin wrote that he found no reason for the dam to be decommissioned. He said that there was no “undue burden for Samost to reconstruct the dam.”
“Samost and his counsel testified to various undue burdens of reconstructing the Dam, such as ongoing maintenance costs and future liabilities. However, Samost provided no financial records at the public hearing,” Martin wrote. “Such records would be required to show undue burden.”
Martin went on and declared that he found no reason to relieve Samost of the court-imposed obligation to reconstruct the dam. Samost had several engineers testify that decommissioning the dam would benefit the surrounding environment, but Martin cited several wildlife and environmental surveys of the Kenilworth Dam that found it was not hurting the environment.
“The court has already determined that the Dam must be reconstructed based on legal contractual agreements between the parties; without an engineering or environmental basis, the Department does not want to interject itself into that decision. The dam removal permit is denied.”
If Samost chooses not to appeal, he has 60 days from the date of the fine sanctioned by the superior court judge.
A call to Samost’s attorney for comment on the ruling and fine was not returned.
