I’m what they call an ob­jec­tor at­tor­ney. We rep­re­sent groups all over New Jersey who are fight­ing to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties. When I go to meet­ings and meet peo­ple who have the same in­ter­ests as my clients, I don’t of­ten see this many peo­ple. Usu­al­ly peo­ple are home watch­ing TV. I ap­plaud all of you for be­ing in­ter­est­ed in your com­mu­ni­ty and for com­ing here and for par­ti­ci­pat­ing, and for mak­ing sure that th­ese im­por­tant pe­ti­tions are signed, and for con­tribut­ing in ev­ery way, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial­ly, to this im­por­tant cause.

 

I’ve been an at­tor­ney since 1986. First I rep­re­sent­ed the De­part­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion as Depu­ty At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. I’ve been in pri­vate prac­tice since 1990. Our firm, Lie­ber­man and Blech­er, in Prince­ton, start­ed in 2000. Much of my prac­tice is de­vot­ed to “green caus­es.” Many of my clients are en­vi­ron­men­tal groups or en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists. I’ve done work for the Sier­ra Club and lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal groups. I’m gen­er­al counsel to the Pas­sa­ic Riv­er Coali­tion. We do lit­igation and land use work. We ap­pear be­fore plan­n­ing boards and mu­ni­ci­pal bodies on a va­ri­e­ty of is­sues.

 

Some of our cas­es have been fa­mous. One of our re­cent suc­cess­es was when we rep­re­sent­ed the Raleigh Av­enue Beach Or­gani­za­tion in Low­er Town­ship, New Jersey. They lived in an area that didn’t have its own beach. There was no beach ac­cess ex­cept through a pri­vate beach, which for years had been free. Then the own­er of the beach de­cid­ed that he had a cap­tive au­di­ence and could charge a lot. It got to the point where he was charg­ing about $800 a year to use the beach in con­trast to about $30 or $40 for a nor­mal beach tag from a mu­ni­ci­pal­i­ty. When the fee was $200 a year, no­body thought about hir­ing a lawy­er. When it was $400 a year, no­body thought about it. When it reached $800, peo­ple start­ed gett­ing upset. They put their re­sources to­gether and they hired the best lawy­er they could find. Any­way, they hired me.

 

The first day that I met with that group, I said to them, “We’re go­ing to go to the Supreme Court.” I nev­er say that be­cause it’s very hard to get to the New Jersey Supreme Court. But I saw this as a case that would be­cause it dealt with an ex­ten­sion of the Public Trust Doc­trine. Our beach­es are for the pur­pose of ev­ery­body to en­joy. They’re a na­t­u­ral re­source. And the ques­tion was: could some­one charge so much that it was ef­fec­tive­ly pre­clud­ing a seg­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty from us­ing it? Sure enough, we brought the case to lit­igation. The low­er court moved against us, but the ap­pel­late court re­v­ersed that de­ci­sion and or­dered an in­junc­tion in one day. I’ve nev­er seen that in my life. In fact, I saw the judge who did it at a func­tion I at­tend­ed lat­er; he was re­tired at that point. I said, “Judge King, I’ve nev­er seen an or­der in one day. Why did you do it?” He said, “Why wait?” He was so excit­ed.

 

The own­er of the beach club then sought re­v­er­sal by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The Supreme Court doesn’t have to take cas­es. They de­cide which ones they’re go­ing to take and they did take this one.

 

We went to the Supreme Court and we won. The Raleigh Av­enue Beach As­so­ci­a­tion case was on the front page of the Star-Ledger. I’ll nev­er for­get it and it’s framed in my of­fice. It stands for the pro­po­si­tion that the Public Trust Doc­trine ap­plies not on­ly to public beach­es, as it has since the 1970s, but al­so to pri­vate­ly owned beach­es in New Jersey. Im­por­tant cas­es like that keep me go­ing. They keep the prac­tice exc­it­ing, and it’s the kind of work that we like to do. We like to do work that counts.

 

When peo­ple who do land use, who get ap­pro­vals for pro­jects, gets malls built, get hous­ing de­vel­op­ments built, driv­ing their kids down the turn­pike, they say, “I got the per­mits for that and I got the per­mits for that.” When I drive my daugh­ter and son down the turn­pike, I say, “That was go­ing to be some­thing, but I stopped that; that was go­ing to be some­thing and I stopped that. And that beau­ti­ful park over there was go­ing to be some­thing, but we stopped that.” You make more mon­ey when you build things than when you stop things, but I think it’s a nicer life to do it this way. So we’re very hap­py.

 

[Ap­plause]

 

Now, let me tell you why what you’re do­ing is so im­por­tant. I grew up in New Mil­ford and I know that Ber­gen Coun­ty peo­ple have a fierce sense of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, so I don’t think I re­al­ly have to ex­plain this, but things mat­ter. It’s easy to say, “What the heck am I do­ing? So what? If they pave it, if they take this three-acre swim­ming site—” I mean, think of it: it’s al­most three acres—can you imagine?—“of a na­t­u­ral spring-fed pool, and if I turn that in­to three con­crete pools, all right, so it’s not the same, but that’s progress. We move on.”

 

But things do mat­ter. You are right. You know things mat­ter and that’s why you’re here. And it’s those lit­tle things, those fla­vors, those tastes, those smells, those aro­mas, that make life in­ter­est­ing and that form a com­mu­ni­ty in their ag­gre­gate. Gray­don Pool is an his­toric re­source. This pool, as you know, is 80 years old in a 100-year-old park. It has served this area well for many years. It is well known. It should be on—and we need to get it on—the New Jersey list of his­toric places. It should be on the fed­er­al list of his­toric places, be­cause it war­rants that kind of pro­tec­tion. And we’re go­ing to talk about do­ing that. And you should know that when sites are on the New Jersey Reg­is­ter or if they are eli­gi­ble for in­clu­sion on the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter, they are en­ti­tled to cer­tain pro­tec­tions and safe­guards.

 

When per­mits are re­quired, such as wet­lands per­mits, a miti­ga­tion plan is re­quired. One of the first things they ask is, “Is this ne­ces­sary? Do we re­al­ly have to em­bark up­on this crazi­ness?” We can’t ask that ques­tion enough in this case. So this is an his­toric re­source and this re­al­ly does mat­ter.

 

I’d like to talk to you about some of the en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues that I find in­ter­est­ing about this pro­ject.

 

Num­ber one is the flood­ing is­sue. There has been con­cret­ing and an in­crease in im­per­vi­ous sur­face in that area al­ready. As an en­vi­ron­men­tal lawy­er, I know that the ag­gre­gate ef­fect of pav­ing, with more pav­ing, more pav­ing, over time en­hances flood­ing.

 

Now, we al­ready know that there is a wa­ter problem in the vicini­ty of the pool. Those problems have a sneaky way of be­com­ing ex­acer­bat­ed when you de­crease the amount of sur­face through which wa­ter can per­co­late in­to the ground. You see, na­ture has a storm wa­ter ma­n­age­ment sys­tem in place. We don’t have to do any­thing to it. When we have undis­turbed soils, wa­ter per­co­lates in­to the soil and recharges the ground wa­ter. Ul­ti­mate­ly, we drink that ground­wa­ter. As a mat­ter of fact, 20 years ago I rep­re­sent­ed Ridge­wood in a law­suit against three oil com­pa­nies on Route 17 that were pol­lut­ing your drink­ing wa­ter. Wa­ter that goes in­to the aquifer is wa­ter that Ridge­wood and other lo­cal mu­ni­ci­pal­i­ties use for drink­ing. That wa­ter gets there by per­co­lat­ing through the ground. It’s cleansed as it goes through the vari­ous stra­ta of the earth and it be­comes clean drink­ing wa­ter.

 

That’s al­so how to pre­vent flood­ing. When we do that sub­ur­ban thing, when we pave and pave and pave, we get flood­ing. Ber­gen Coun­ty in gen­er­al has a large flood­ing problem be­cause when Ber­gen Coun­ty was built out as a place for peo­ple that work in New York to go and live 50 years ago, there was no un­der­s­tand­ing of th­ese is­sues. Un­con­trolled de­vel­op­ment in­creased the flood­ing problems that we have in many com­mu­ni­ties. There’s a flood­ing problem by this pool. You don’t need to ex­acer­bate it by pav­ing. So you should be con­cerned about the flood­ing is­sues.

 

Let me tell you some­thing from my ex­pe­ri­ence: flood­ing is­sues will al­ways be pooh-poo­hed by the gov­ern­ment. If the gov­ern­ment is in fa­vor of con­cret­ing this, or what­ev­er the gov­ern­ment is in fa­vor of, when they’re faced with le­gi­t­i­mate flood­ing po­ten­tial, they al­ways pooh-pooh it. Then what hap­pens, al­ways—100% of the time—is that the de­vel­op­ment goes in­to place and five years lat­er, we find that af­ter a sig­ni­f­i­cant rain­fall, there’s much more flood­ing than there was five years be­fore the de­vel­op­ment. And guess what? There’s noth­ing in the world any­body can do about it. You can’t sue any­body be­cause the gov­ern­ment is im­mune from suit.

 

There’s a law called the Tort Claims Act which pre­cludes you, re­al­ly, for all in­tents and pur­pos­es—al­though I de­ny it and I try to sue the gov­ern­ment over it—but it ef­fec­tive­ly pre­cludes you from su­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ment for flood­ing you out by en­gag­ing in poor plan­n­ing. So it’s the kind of thing where you’ll be told, “Don’t wor­ry about it, don’t wor­ry about it, don’t wor­ry about it.” They will do it, it will flood, and then they will say, “You know, there’s noth­ing we can do, but we agree with you, this is ter­ri­ble. It hap­pens. When it rains, it floods.” Well, it doesn’t hap­pen. It hap­pens when you en­gage in poor plan­n­ing. This is an ex­am­ple of poor plan­n­ing. Don’t let them pooh-pooh you when you say it. Don’t let them make false as­su­r­ances. Don’t let them tell you that they’re go­ing to make the drai­nage problem bet­ter af­ter the de­vel­op­ment than it was be­fore the de­vel­op­ment, which is another thing they al­ways say. Al­ways.

 

I’ve nev­er been be­fore a Plan­n­ing Board or Coun­cil meet­ing where they didn’t say—al­ways—that the flood­ing that ex­ists will be bet­ter, that there will be less of it and there will be more con­trol af­ter de­vel­op­ment than be­fore de­vel­op­ment, and “I have a bridge to sell you” if you haven’t al­ready bought it once or twice. It’s a load of nonsense. I’m here to tell you that. Don’t for­get that. When you are there be­fore the Coun­cil, don’t for­get that!

 

I al­so want to talk to you about the his­toric preser­va­tion as­pects of this. We al­ready talked about the fact that if it’s eli­gi­ble for in­clu­sion on the state or na­tio­n­al reg­is­ter, this spe­cial miti­ga­tion has to hap­pen. But his­toric preser­va­tion is, in and of it­self, an en­vi­ron­men­tal kind of con­cept that, in this coun­try, we don’t give enough def­er­ence to. For any­one who has been for­tu­nate enough to trav­el through Eu­rope—if you’ve been in Ita­ly, France or Lon­don, where ev­ery­thing is a thou­sand years old—of course our coun­try is younger, but we just don’t do a very good job of re­spect­ing some of our trea­sures. I don’t know why that is, but some­where it got in­to the mind­set of plan­n­ers that you should clean the slate and start over again, and that in­vari­ab­ly that will yield a bet­ter re­sult than preser­va­tion. Well, preser­va­tion is im­por­tant and it is, in and of it­self, an im­por­tant goal. And I think you know that. This is a won­der­ful site. There are many, many me­m­ories of chil­dren who grew up here that are as­so­ci­at­ed with this.

 

I’ve heard that peo­ple from all over the coun­try have sent you emails which con­curred with that in their hearts and in their minds. They, too, un­der­s­tood how im­por­tant this was. This is an im­por­tant re­source. Keep that in mind and don’t let the Coun­cil pooh-pooh that. Fight for it. You have to fight be­cause it’s so much easi­er to bull­doze it over than to fight and stand for some­thing that is im­por­tant, and this is worth fight­ing for be­cause it means some­thing and it’s im­por­tant.

 

I al­so want to talk to you about another en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue, and that is the health is­sues that have been bandied about con­cern­ing this na­t­u­ral re­source, which is spring fed. I have heard that peo­ple com­plain that this pond isn’t as crys­tal clear as it would be if it were a con­crete pool with a fil­ter. And that’s true. The pond isn’t as clear as it would be if it were a pool with a fil­ter—and it’s not sup­posed to be. Ponds are na­t­u­ral. They’re or­gan­ic. They have a live ecosys­tem as­so­ci­at­ed with them. There’s noth­ing wrong with it. That’s what swim­ming ar­eas are when they are na­t­u­ral.

 

I will tell you some­thing else. Oceans aren’t pris­tine in terms of clar­i­ty, ei­ther. Go fig­ure! So maybe what we should do is at­tach a fil­ter to the ocean. Take the salt out. Let’s clean that! Get rid of those darned fish! Maybe ev­ery­body from Ridge­wood can be bused over there and swim there as well. Of course, it isn’t as clear as it would be if it were a con­crete pool with a fil­ter. Are we to be sur­prised by that con­clu­sion? How­ev­er—and this is what you need to keep in mind, as a kid who sold pool chem­i­cals be­fore I went to law school—it is clean. That’s a clean pool. The test re­sults—time and time and time and time again—show that the bac­te­rial lev­els are cer­tain­ly ac­cept­able. As a mat­ter of fact, they are ac­cept­able not on­ly for na­t­u­ral wa­ter bodies, but for con­crete pool bodies. It is clean. Don’t be­lieve this rub­bish that it isn’t clean. Clar­i­ty is one com­po­nent of wa­ter qual­i­ty and bac­te­rial lev­els are another. That’s a sani­tiz­ing is­sue. Two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent things. Murki­ness is na­t­u­ral. It does not mean that the wa­ter isn’t clean. It is clean. It ex­ceeds state stan­dards.

 

I don’t want any­body from the Coun­cil—and I know they wouldn’t do this—no­body from the Coun­cil would ev­er say this— so I hope in ad­vance that they’ll ac­cept my apol­o­gy for even suggest­ing it—that this wa­ter is dir­ty or that it’s un­healthy. It isn’t. It is FINE. Murki­ness does not equ­ate to the is­sue of sani­ta­tion. It is fine. And you wouldn’t want your pond to look like a fil­tered swim­ming pool. They’re dif­fer­ent things. They’re dif­fer­ent an­i­mals. I think we need to talk about that. And YOU, I hope, will talk about it when you go to a Coun­cil meet­ing. And you need to shout those peo­ple down the way they shout you down, and you need to make sure that they are lis­ten­ing to facts and that on­ly facts are part of this col­lo­quy and no emo­tions that are un­sup­port­ed by facts. There’s been a lot of that.

 

[Ap­plause]

 

There’s another en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­lat­ed is­sue that I think we need to talk about, and it’s a sen­si­tive is­sue, but we’re all friends, and it con­cerns ma­n­age­ment of the pool. It’s im­por­tant that peo­ple not al­low the pool to be mis­ma­n­aged—to al­low for some in­di­cia of un­kempt­ness to creep in and then blame that on in­her­ent fea­tures of the pool, be­cause that’s not true. So, for ex­am­ple, if we look at re­ports at this pool from 2007 and we see that it wasn’t chlo­ri­nat­ed enough or chem­i­cal­ly treat­ed within the guide­lines suggest­ed by the DEP, then we shouldn’t won­der why maybe some bac­te­rial lev­els ex­ceed­ed what was ac­cept­able in 2007. Don’t al­low them to kill this pool by ne­glect­ing it and then come to you and say, “It’s dead; what are we to do?” What they are to do is ma­n­age the pool.

 

Now, I’m sure most of you have seen a let­ter from the DEP where the de­part­ment stat­ed quite clear­ly that this pool can be run suc­cess­ful­ly through prop­er main­te­nance. So that is what is ne­ces­sary and my un­der­s­tand­ing is that there are plen­ty of ex­am­ples of a lack of main­te­nance in the way that we would all like to see as­so­ci­at­ed with this pool. My un­der­s­tand­ing is, for ex­am­ple, even in the sim­ple thing like pool pass­es be­ing checked, that they aren’t uni­form­ly checked, and that when peo­ple need dai­ly pass­es, of­ten there aren’t peo­ple there to greet them and peo­ple aren’t pay­ing at­ten­tion. But then they com­plain there isn’t enough rev­enue com­ing in. Well, maybe if you do your job se­ri­ous­ly and en­sure that ev­ery­body who comes in has ei­ther a pass or pays for a pass or a guest pass, then you won’t have that kind of problem.

 

I’d like to talk to you about another re­lat­ed is­sue, and we just touched on it for a se­cond, and that con­cerns the fi­nan­cial abil­i­ty of the pool to cont­in­ue. My un­der­s­tand­ing is that for about the last two years, rev­enues of the pool have gone down. And my un­der­s­tand­ing is that for about the last two years, rev­enues in just about any­thing that charges any­thing for any­thing in this coun­try have gone down. We have been in a re­ces­sion. Now, I guess Ridge­wood hasn’t been in a re­ces­sion, but what I suggest you do is get copies of The New York Times and bring it to Coun­cil mem­bers at the next meet­ing so they can find out that we have been in a re­ces­sion.

 

Many peo­ple who live in Ridge­wood have been af­fect­ed by the re­ces­sion. Be­cause there’s a train in the mid­dle of Ridge­wood, and do you still have the green tax­i­cabs in Ridge­wood, or no? Do they still have those? Those lit­tle green cabs pick ev­ery­body up from the train sta­tion and take them from where they work in New York and take them home. Many peo­ple in Ridge­wood work in New York Ci­ty and have been im­pact­ed more so than many other places in New Jersey by the re­ces­sion.

 

There are a lot of Wall Street jobs in this com­mu­ni­ty. When peo­ple lose their jobs or when their in­come has gone down, or when one per­son in a two-in­come fam­i­ly los­es a job, what might be deemed as dis­cre­tio­nary spend­ing gets cut. So, ob­vi­ous­ly, the amount of mon­ey that the pool and just about ev­ery­thing else in Ridge­wood and in New Jersey and the Unit­ed States, and, by the way, in the whole world, has seen has gone down. Let’s not play the blame game and say, “Rev­enue is down; we have to kill this pool,” be­cause the fact of the mat­ter is that rev­enue is down be­cause we are in a glob­al re­ces­sion. Rev­enue might al­so be down be­cause the Pool Pro­ject (and does that not sound like some kind of 1970s band, by the way?)—I mean, let’s face it, you’ve been hear­ing what peo­ple have been say­ing. You’ve been hear­ing what has been leaked to the me­dia, and there have been all kinds of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions about this pool. Af­ter a while, when peo­ple start hear­ing the same old, same old, same old, some peo­ple be­lieve it. So you’ve got a re­ces­sion, and then you’ve got a bunch of peo­ple who are mo­ti­vat­ed to bring about a cer­tain re­sult and may be say­ing cer­tain things to bring about what might be their de­sired re­sult.

 

Cer­tain other sto­ries are float­ing around that I want to touch up­on be­fore we part ways tonight.

 

Num­ber one is the sto­ry that this RFP, this Re­quest for Pro­pos­als, is “just to see what’s out there,” even though it may con­tain an il­lus­tra­tion of three pools that are con­crete in­side a three-acre area. If one were in­c­lined to look at things in a skep­ti­cal way, one might won­der whether re­al­ly the pur­pose of the RFP is to just see what’s out there, or is it re­al­ly to have peo­ple who are ap­plying for the RFP come back with some­thing that is be­ing strong­ly suggest­ed in the RFP. I think we need to keep this in a lev­el play­ing area—or lev­el pool—and it could be that what we’re see­ing is fair play. I suggest that it might very well not be fair play.

 

Then there are sugges­tions that “My kids won’t go to the pool any more and what are we do­ing with this pool, and the on­ly thing we can do now is con­crete it over be­cause that’s the on­ly way that this thing can be worked out.” There is lit­tle em­pir­i­cal da­ta that is out there in this very sparse re­cord that has been cre­at­ed to suggest that the de­mo­graph­ics of who’s us­ing the pool and who’s not us­ing the pool are in any way re­lat­ed to whether it now has a con­crete bot­tom or whether it has that beau­ti­ful sandy bot­tom or whether it has the sand. Many, many chil­dren, many kids, many tee­nagers go to lakes. They go to oceans. They go to the beach. They go to all kinds of things. I don’t know. Maybe if you clean the bath­room, they’ll come. Just an idea.

 

We don’t want to start draw­ing what might be un­rea­son­able con­clu­sions and float­ing them about with­out em­pir­i­cal evi­dence. And I can suggest to you that there’s lit­tle like­li­hood that any such da­ta will ev­er be pro­duced if you ask for it.

 

My un­der­s­tand­ing is that there was an exchange re­cent­ly where an in­di­vi­d­u­al who is close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with this or­gani­za­tion com­plained that half of what was con­tained in the Ridge­wood Pool Pro­ject’s Fi­nal Re­port was fic­tion or ex­ag­ger­a­tion. There was a re­sponse by an elect­ed of­fi­cial that that is a mat­ter of opinion. And let me suggest to you that while right now I don’t have my fin­ger on the ex­act per­cen­t­age that is fic­tion or ex­ag­ger­a­tion, whether some­thing is fic­tion or ex­ag­ger­a­tion, con­trast­ed with fact, is nev­er a mat­ter of opinion. It ei­ther is or it isn’t. And I think rather than say­ing “that’s a mat­ter of opinion,” and think­ing that that is a valid way of ad­dress­ing a le­gi­t­i­mate con­cern that there might not be suf­fi­cient fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion in a public re­port that is be­ing used, at least in part, as a ba­sis for go­ing for­ward with an RFP, a more in­formed re­sponse would have been, “Well, why don’t we go over what you be­lieve isn’t truth­ful or hon­est, or what you be­lieve is an ex­ag­ger­a­tion, and why don’t we spend some time try­ing to com­pare notes and har­moniz­ing th­ese dif­fer­ent points of view so that we can all de­ter­mine to­gether the facts, and then de­cide where we should go, if any­where at all?”

 

Let me close with this sugges­tion. We all grew up hear­ing that you can’t fight Ci­ty Hall. I want to tell you that when a com­mu­ni­ty is unit­ed and when peo­ple have the spir­it, as de­mon­s­trat­ed by peo­ple sitt­ing here to­day and others that couldn’t come to­day, and when peo­ple un­der­s­tand that some­thing means some­thing and some­thing is worth fight­ing for, and some things re­al­ly mat­ter, that you can fight Ci­ty Hall. I make a ca­reer of fight­ing Ci­ty Hall and, while I cer­tain­ly am not al­ways suc­cess­ful, we have a good track re­cord. The fact of the mat­ter is that I am suc­cess­ful when my clients care, and when my clients are mo­ti­vat­ed, and when my clients work hard and have a mono­ma­nia that this is some­thing that means some­thing. I tend not to do that well when a client says, “Look, I’m a rich per­son. Here’s the mon­ey. Do what­ev­er it takes and give me a call or send me an email in a year or two and let me know how it works out.” I’ll take the case, but I tend not to be that suc­cess­ful. This is the en­vi­ron­ment—this is ripe for suc­cess be­cause peo­ple mat­ter. You’re here; you’re excit­ed; you un­der­s­tand.

 

In con­clu­sion, you can fight Ci­ty Hall, I as­sure you. Keep your eye on the ball. Re­mem­ber what mat­ters. Don’t be in­timi­dat­ed. Don’t be shout­ed down by any­body. Look ev­ery­one straight in the eye: eye-to-eye con­tact. En­sure them that you mat­ter, that you are what this is all about—gov­ern­ing is about peo­ple—and that your voic­es need to be heard and that his­toric re­sources that are im­por­tant and mean some­thing to peo­ple can­not be al­lowed to sim­p­ly van­ish be­cause it’s ex­pe­di­ent to do so rather than look­ing hard­er for a de­ci­sion that makes more sense. Thank you very much.