Neighbors in Hackensack and Maywood argue over damming of brookLast updated: Tuesday October 11, 2011, 8:02 AM
BY STEPHANIE AKIN
STAFF WRITER
The Record
A swampy, forested nature preserve on the Hackensack and Maywood border – a serene departure from the heavily developed areas that surround it – is becoming the focus of a decidedly agitated dispute among its neighbors.
STEVE HOCKSTEIN/SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Adi and Kevin Madden in Hackensack at a dam built by a Borg's Woods neighbor to attract birds. They say it has caused flooding and drawn insects. Residents on the Hackensack side of Borg's Woods claim that misguided preservationists have been repeatedly damming the brook that chortles through the 14-acre wetlands. They argue that the group is trying to increase the habitat for waterfowl and wetlands creatures but is instead creating an acrid, mosquito-infested pool that is flooding basements and encroaching on their back yards.
Meanwhile, preservationist Eric Martindale and his supporters — which include Maywood officials, a local wetlands conservation group and a Maywood resident who has been accused of sneaking into the woods to block the water flow — say the only people disrupting the water are residents. The preservationists argue residents are trying to widen the brook with shovels because they want to direct water away from their houses.
The back storyBergen County bought the 14-acre wetlands area known as Borg's Woods in 1994. The $1.74 million purchase — from the parent company of The Record — came after years of pressure from local preservationists. The conservation group organized in response to a proposal to build condominiums on the property. Whatever the truth about the water, the situation has muddied the rare experience of living at the edge of one of the county's most pristine places, residents said.
"It's a quality-of-life issue," said Beverly Miller, who has lived on Brook Street in Hackensack since 1999. "We bought the house because of those trees, and now we can't enjoy them."
The preserve is surrounded by some of the most densely developed land in the state – only 60 acres in the entire 4-mile radius of Hackensack were listed as open space in the city's most recent master plan, in 2001. But on a recent afternoon in the woods — technically county land and not part of either Hackensack or Maywood – the sounds were limited to cracking twigs and chirping birds.
Just a short walk, however, revealed signs of recent human disturbance: a rocky dam seemed to block the brook at the base of an area considered a seasonal pond. Beyond it, the sunlight glinted on a pool of still water slightly larger than a soccer field. Downstream, near the Maywood border, a collection of sticks and other debris seemed to clog the brook again, creating a smaller pool. The origin of those two pools, and the role of the dams and the debris in creating it, is at the heart of the dispute surrounding Borg's Woods.
Because the park is protected under the state freshwater wetlands act, any disturbance of the water without a permit can be punishable by a fine – in extreme cases as high as $25,000 a day.
Kevin and Adi Madden — a Maywood police officer and a Hackensack schoolteacher who live on the Hackensack border — say they have filmed their Maywood neighbor Bill Jerlinski building dams and throwing sticks and rocks into the stream.
The Maddens claim Jerlinski, a friend of Martindale's and a member of the Maywood Democratic Club, has used his political weight to garner support. The couple's appeals to the two men to stop were rebuffed, and Jerlinski and Martindale filed numerous harassment complaints against them, according to the Maddens.
The Maddens circulated a petition, signed by 32 residents of Brook Street, Byrne Street and other nearby roads, asking Maywood and Bergen County officials to stop the flooding.
Hackensack Councilman John Labrosse,who has lived across the street for 32 years and signed the petition, said he had seen the dams, although he had never seen anyone building them.
"I can't say it's causing all the problems," he said. "I can just say, since those dams have been there, the problems have gotten worse."
But officials declined to intervene in what they described as a dispute among neighbors, and Kevin Madden was pulled aside by his supervisor at the police station and told to stay away from Jerlinski, an encounter Maywood Mayor Tim Eustace confirmed.
Madden said they won't back down.
"This is a legal issue," he said. "We shouldn't have to petition local residents to have the law enforced. It's the law."
Jerlinski and Martindale deny building any dams — the one that was there was likely constructed by neighbors who wanted to incriminate them, Martindale said.
'Go away'Jerlinski declined to comment for this article, beyond saying that he wanted to preserve the integrity of the woods.
"I don't want to address these people," he said. "I want them to go away."
Martindale, who no longer lives in the area, said the problem is that residents bought their houses without realizing what it meant to live next to a wetlands. He said neighbors and Bergen County Mosquito Commissioners routinely go into the woods with shovels and dredge the brook.
Martindale spent years petitioning state officials to recognize part of the area as a vernal pool — a temporary ecosystem that forms a natural habitat for several species of amphibians and other wildlife. But he said he would have no reason to build a dam.
"There is no need for a dam back there because groundwater upwells and pools there naturally," he wrote in an e-mail.
Their accounts were supported by Eustace and Hugh Carola, program director for the Hackensack Riverkeeper conservation organization. Eustace said it was impossible for water to travel uphill from Jerlinski's property and cause flooding in Hackensack.
"It's been a vernal pool for decades," Carola said. "These people [residents] would love to see it filled in and gone."
County and state officials said they have received multiple complaints from both sides, and several officials said they have asked both sides not to divert the water.
The state Department of Environmental Protection sent a letter informing residents around the park that the area is regulated. County parks officials met with Jerlinski and asked him to stop damming the water, County Landscape Architect Al Koenig said. "Our understanding is, he no longer dams it up," Koenig said.
Peter Pluchino, the director of the county mosquito patrol program, said workers periodically remove dams from the area and regularly spray the water for mosquito larvae, but the complaints are too numerous to respond every time.
"You've got two groups there, two individuals that are constantly battling," he said. "One is diverting the water into the Borg's Woods and the other is trying to drain it out. Every time one of them does something, they blame the county."
Hackensack residents, meanwhile, petitioned the City Council last week to intervene on their behalf, a request City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono said he is researching.
E-mail: akin@northjersey.com
