Goin' Swimming? Maybe Shadow Lake

It looks like Shadow Lake Village resident Austin Canade may just get that algae-free swim he’s been longing for.

The senior and avid swimmer has frequented Middletown Township Committee meetings asking for some tangible hope from officials that the day will come when he can again swim in the lake that is the namesake of his development — Shadow Lake — without “feeling growth all around me” and the sensation of getting “pulled down” by it.

Senator Joseph Kyrillos (R-13) announced yesterday that for fiscal year 2012, “the financing for this project is finally nearing approval.  The Environmental Infrastructure Trust was established for just this purpose- to restore contaminated natural treasures and improve the environmental quality of our communities.”

Kyrillos, who is co-prime sponsor of legislation establishing an Environmental Infrastructure Trust (EIT) fund, announced that special financing, in the form of a low-interest loan, for the clean-up of the lake was officially added to the funding authorization bill at yesterday’s meeting of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee.

While the bill must still be approved by the full Senate, the action still signals a green light for the project that has had a fiscally debilitating price tag of an estimated $4 million.

The bill, once approved by the legislature, $2.7 million in funds will be freed up for the township’s coffers.

For a decade, officials have wrangled with finding an ecologically and economically sound, expedient way to get the lake dredged so that it would once again be considered a valued environmental and recreational resource in the township.

“It has been a very long fight for the residents of this community,” said Kyrillos in a released statement.

Officials ran into a project roadblock when the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) made it clear that, when removed, any dredge spoils gleaned from the lake would have to be transported to a safe, licensed off-site location, dried out and then taken to a legal dumping ground, Middletown Mayor Tony Fiore said.

Township Attorney Brian Nelson had said that where the township had no luck with the last administration’s state DEP officials, the new DEP principals seem more receptive. The township governing body is all-Republican, as is the Christie-appointed administration.

“We can’t do anything without permits,” he had said a couple of months ago at a Township Committee meeting. “But the DEP is working with us much better than it formerly did. Before it was clear they were not giving us permits.”

Now, knowing that the funds are being secured, Mayor Fiore said that the next step would be to go out to bid for the project.

“Thanks to the efforts of Senator Kyrillos the residents of the communities surrounding Shadow Lake can rest easier knowing that a project more than a decade in the making is nearing reality,” said Fiore.  “In addition to the senator’s efforts in helping secure financing for this project, he has assisted the township with the DEP to find a qualified site outside of Middletown for disposal of the dredge spoils.”