Politics & Government
$17 Million Spent to Preserve Open Space Surrounding Joint Base
Ocean County Freeholders say land buy will prevent encroachment, reduce accidents
More than half the accident potential zone around the megabase created from Navy Lakehurst, Fort Dix, and McGuire Air Force base — or 3,000 acres — has been preserved as open space at a cost of $17 million, according to a spokesman for the base.
Dennis Blazak of Point Pleasant, chief environmental engineer at the base, told Ocean County’s freeholders that preservation work by officials in communities ringing the military installation are helping to buffer it from the encroachment of development and reducing the chance of accidents. Land is being preserved in Burlington County as well as Ocean.
The Ocean freeholders acted moments after Blazak’s analysis to spend $3,375,000 to buy 400 acres of the Clayton Sand and Gravel mining operation in Jackson Township and preserve the land, which is right at the end of a base runway.
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“I walk my dog there at night. It’s quite a sight watching the planes landing and taking off,’’ said Garry Black of Jackson.
Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. said the state Pineland Conservation Fund will contribute another $1,125,000 to the purchase of the 400 acres. He said that tract adjoins the county’s Patriots’ Park in Jackson.
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“This will protect the economic viability of the base,’’ said Cindy Roberts of the Trust for Public Land, which partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense to buy development rights on another 1,400 acres of the Clayton tract for $3 million. She pointed out that 40,000 people work at the joint base.
Black insisted the actions “preserve dollars and cents,’’ by avoiding the expense of servicing developments that might have been built on the property off Route 571 in Jackson.
Freeholder Gerry P. Little said the purchase brings 14,452 acres to the amount of land preserved as farms for open space by the county. When federal, state and local holdings are included, 57 percent of the county’s 408,000 acres of land are preserved, Little said.
The freeholders also bought 13 acres extending from the base to Route 571 in Jackson for 13 acres for $66,500 with the Defense Department agreeing to reimburse the county half that cost. Bartlett said that property adjoins land the county owns, and will be added to the buffer around the base.
