County Water Plan, Hopatcong on Same Page

The Hopatcong Borough Council consented by resolution to the proposed Sussex County Water Quality Management Plan.

Borough attorney John Ursin said the document, an amendment to the county’s water quality plan, has been in the works for more than five years as the county and the state Department of Environmental Protection worked out the details.

Mayor Sylvia Petillo said the document mainly addresses water quality issues in the Highland preservation zone and would have no impact on the borough.

The plan provides updated maps for future sewer service area across the county.

According to a public notice for a public hearing held last week in Newton, filed by the DEP, the map “identified areas to be served by sewerage treatment facilities/sewer systems as well as areas to be served by septic systems with design flows of equal to or less than 2,000 gallons a day.”

The proposed map modifies previously approved sewer service areas to “eliminate environmentally sensitive areas that are not currently connected to sewer systems,” the notice said. The parcels and areas defined as environmentally sensitive for the most part are protect by other state and federal laws.

Environmentally sensitive areas are defined as contiguous areas of 25 acres or larger consisting of habitat for threatened and endangered species, natural heritage priority sites, Category One special water source  protection areas and wetlands, the notice said.

Further, the proposed map removes some areas from sewer service areas based on local initiatives and in some cases adds new areas based on local planning decisions.

The public notice and a map of the new plan is available at: http://www.nj.gov/dep/wqmp/wmpnotices.html