Hi everyone. I’m a newbie here but I work for NJCF and would really like to address some of the misconceptions out there surrounding this issue. Let me just say that this is just me talking here so any opinions here are mine and not necessarily those of NJCF.
46er’s comments are right on to a point. It was a good solution to a bad problem but the Chatsworth site was not ever intended by any party including the folks at the NJORVP to be the permanent home of the off-road vehicle park. Let me just give a little background to this story.
NJCF received that property as a donation in 1978. Over the years, the rampant off-road vehicle use grew to become such a problem that we knew traditional enforcement would not solve the problem. In the early to mid 1990’s NJCF sought out a group of responsible riders to see if they would be interested a novel approach to solving a part of this State’s problem of a lack of appropriate places to ride ORVs (at the time there were no designated public riding areas). So we helped to organize the non-profit that currently runs the park and then convinced the NJDEP, Pinelands Commission and Woodland Township to agree to temporarily allow for the creation of a supervised ORV park for one 10-year period. The primary reason for the temporary nature of the park was because the property is in the Preservation Area of the pine barrens and a park such as this is expressly prohibited by the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan. Not to metion home to numerous rare and threatened species and one of the greatest wilderness areas on the east coast.
In exchange for this temporary park, several things were supposed to be accomplished: 1) The NJORVP was to create a controlled riding area and clamp down on the riding on the rest of the 265-acre property. 2) The NJORVP organization was to escrow about $20,000 for the restoration of the property after its closure in 2008. 3) The NJORVP was to gain experience on how to build and run a park like this so in 10 years they could transition to their own property in an area of the pine barrens where this is a legal and permitted activity. During this time NJCF also helped the NJORVP directly and indirectly by making sure that there was both state and federal funding available for either the State or a non-profit like NJORVP to use to buy land, build a new park and complete this solution.
Well 1 & 2 happened and 3 didn’t. Many have blamed the State for not coming up with a new site in time and that in some ways is fair based on statements made by DEP. But sometimes if you really want something done, you need to do it yourself. The funding that the State is using to buy and build ORV parks is also available to qualified non-profits as well. So the ORV community has as much if not more responsibility for the lack of a new facility as any other group. As an example, when the State’s negotiations with DeMarco fell through, NJCF didn’t complain and bad-mouth the State. We said ‘this is something that should happen’ and raised the money to preserve the 9,400 acres ourselves which is now the Franklin Parker Preserve.
So NJCF helped to create the NJORVP non-profit, got the State and the town to suspend their regulations for 10 years, let NJORVP use our property for those 10 years to build the expertise and membership base needed to relocate to a permanent home, and worked to ensure that ample funding was in place to allow the ORV community buy their own place. All of this was above and beyond our stated mission as an organization. We recognize that illegal ORV riding is a huge problem and that safe legal site are absolutely needed but I think it is fair to say that we have done more than our part to solve this problem.
I’ll now open the floor to questions and the odd flying rotten tomato…….
- Chris
