Hewitt Road Property Owner Rips Out Problematic Driveways, storm water concerns remain

Earlier this week, we wrote about flooding occuring on Hewitt Road on and around the unauthorized construction occurring at 25 Hewitt Road.

On Saturday, the property owner, Alfred "Al" Pangia, returned with more heavy equipment, but this time he was here to dismantle part of his project. In particular, after complaints of flooding, he decided to dismantle two of the three driveways on the property, and in particular get rid of the poorly installed culvert pipes that were shown to be blocked and overflowing during the Thursday afternoon storms.

While Mr. Pangia has asserted on multiple occasions that he is only building a single family home for his wife and himself to retire to, he has no explanation on why the 28 acre property required three driveways, or why the southern most driveway was over 20' wide.

The location of the three driveways are shown in red below.

The Northern and Southern most driveways are each running along the exact end of the property line, ignoring set back requirements entirely.

I talked to Mr. Pangia for several minutes at the site while the culverts were being removed, he spoke from one of the trucks from the construction company he owns, Affordable Paving Contractors, Inc.

Mr. Pangia had a number of heavy earth movers on the property scraping the driveway and digging up and removing the culvert pipes.

The work spilled into Hewitt Road on several occasions. There were no flaggers or permits in evidence; Mr. Pangea would stand in the middle of Hewitt Road and/or block parts of it with his pickup truck while the heavy equipment worked.

Mr. Pangia indicated he was trying to do the right thing and "fit into the neighborhood he ultimately will settle in" with his wife. When asked why he was undertaking all this construction without permits or understanding of the area, he replied "I'm not from around here. I live and work down in Camden. It is flat there. I am not used to hills or this kind of country". When it was pointed out his property was in a very sensitive area from an environmental and land use perspective, he shrugged and blamed his engineering firm. "They were supposed to get the permits, I don't know what is going on with them". As he continued to profess ignorance of permits, zoning, and general construction laws in the State, he was asked how he could be ignorant of such things while owning a paving and construction firm that operates within the State of New Jersey, he merely smiled and shrugged.

At the end of the day, the culvert pipes from the two extreme ends of the property were removed, with the driveways merely ending at the drainage ditch. The third, middle driveway in the property was left intact.

The southernmost driveway culvert pipe removed.

The northern driveway culvert pipe removed.

It is not clear what exactly Mr. Pangia hoped to achieve by removing the culvert pipes but leaving the rest of the site as it is. The storm water runoff situation from the 28 acre property itself still exists.

The culvert pipes are still on-site on the property, as shown in the pictures below.

At this point, extreme damage has already been done on the site. Dozens or possibly hundreds of live trees were removed; stumps and garbage were being buried on site; soil was being trucked in from unknown sources; heavy earth moving equipment has compacted the soil tremendously; vernal pools known to be on the site have almost certainly been filled in; wild life on the property, particularly snakes, have been actively killed and left on neighbor's property lines; sediment and runoff are already reaching our local creeks and streams.

West Amwell Township, County Soil authorities, and NJ Department of Environmental Protection have all protested the construction, and appear to be in varying stages of finding and serving violations against the property owner.