From the Asbury Park Press

Nov. 25, 2007

A dead end for ATV set?

Despite years of discussion, DEP hasn't opened a new off-road vehicle park yet

BY KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER

With just 10 months left at their longtime location near Chatsworth in Burlington County, organizers of the New Jersey Off-Road Vehicle Park say they're pressing state officials to fulfill a pledge to open a new riding area.

"By December 2005, they were supposed to have two (off-road) parks up and running," said Leslie Montanaro of Waretown, who is secretary of the Chatsworth park organization.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has proposed one site, a former sand-and-gravel mine in Monroe in Gloucester County, but riders still are waiting to hear about progress on opening that location, she said. The DEP already has spent $1.2 million in Green Acres funds to acquire the former Silvi Concrete property in Monroe. The Monroe site also is being reviewed by the state Pinelands Commission.

"We're waiting on DEP" to answer some questions the commission staff posed about wetlands and endangered species on the tract, said commission spokesman Paul Leaken. "The commission continues to support the goal of trying to identify a new off-road vehicle park."

There are an estimated 200,000 off-road vehicles in New Jersey, and they are a legitimate recreational use — "We need to recognize that," John Watson Jr., an assistant commissioner with the DEP, said earlier this year. "Our collective interest is to provide a safe and legal alternative for riders."

"It's just a resources issue, to be honest," Watson said last week.

The DEP's Green Acres program director, John Flynn, has been working with riders' advocates on the Monroe project. Watson said DEP workers are trying to put together a public document, called a request for proposals, to lay out what's needed for a nonprofit group to run a new park at the property located near Williamstown in Monroe.

The Off-Road Vehicle Park group, which has operated and insured the Chatsworth facility since 1998, is the most likely candidate. But Watson said the selection needs to be a public process.

Watson said he's looking for the proposal document to be ready at the beginning of 2008, and "I would hope we could get a contract in place with an organization by the summer."

That's a tight time line that worries Kenny Dean Montanaro, Leslie's husband and director of the Off-Road Vehicle Park group.

Opened under a unique agreement with the DEP and state Pinelands Commission, the 260-acre site off Route 72 in the Chatsworth section of Woodland is due to close in September 2008, according to terms of a lease with the landowner, the nonprofit New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

Over the past nine years, riders worked with the foundation to replant trees and supervise what had been a wide-open riding area plagued by accidents and injuries almost every weekend. Montanaro said he has asked if it's possible to extend the lease until the state is ready to open the Monroe tract, but the conservation foundation "told us it will never happen," he said.

"I seriously doubt that it's going to be considered," Watson agreed.

Riders are afraid they will be left without a place to ride for an unknown period of time if the Chatsworth site is closed down before a new venue opens up.
Montanaro said riders are concerned that review of the Monroe site could bog down in issues related to threatened or endangered plant and animal species on the property.

"We have had some indication" that there are species there, Watson said. "However, the thing we keep in mind is the reason we are trying to do this," he added. There's a net environmental benefit to getting riders onto a controlled site, instead of them motoring through the Pinelands and blundering into stands of rare plants and snake habitat, Watson explained.

Meanwhile, the riders are alarmed by legislation that would sharply increase the penalties for illegally operating vehicles and motorcycles on public land. Sponsored by Assembly members Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer, Paul D. Moriarty, D-Camden, and Michael J. Panter, D-Monmouth, bill A-4172 also provides for police to impound vehicles and mandates driver's license suspensions for repeat offenders.

Stiffer penalties have been coming since former DEP Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell proposed a two-track solution to illegal riding: higher penalties, but with state-sanctioned public-riding areas, which Campbell proposed to have ready by 2005. Montanaro said he's concerned another enforcement crackdown, such as the one Campbell ordered in 2003, is on the way without any progress on a new park.

"The problem with that bill is it will make more people run (from law enforcement). Now you're going to have kids running and getting hurt," he said. "Our sport is the only sport out there where we're treated like criminals."

Watson said the DEP understands the riders' concerns. "We had committed in the past administration that most of those things would go down the path at the same time," and that's still the agency's intent, he said.

It would help if a bigger part of the riding community got involved along with the Off-Road Vehicle Park, Watson said, adding "the industry (vehicle manufacturers) need to step up and get involved in this too." Owners of the Motorsports Park in Millville are considering adding an off-road area, so there is potential for private-sector park development, "even in New Jersey," he said.

Loretta Winters, a former Monroe Township Committee member, said she will try to meet with the legislators to get their help with moving the park proposal forward. She also wants to meet with municipal officials in neighboring Buena Vista, where Mayor Charles Chiarello has raised concerns about the plan, "to put their fears and objections to rest."

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