Residents Raise Water Flow Concerns of Neighbor's Project

It’s spring, which means most are out tending to their yards and stopping by the home and gardening store for supplies. One Morris Plains homeowner is going further with a complete makeover of his grounds.

Homeowners within 200 feet of the 15 Sunrise Drive home got a letter in the mail that owner Terry Mullens planed to bring large quantities of soil onto his property from Oct. 15-20. 

Heading up the project is Zizza Landscape Construction LLC, which is based in Denville. The amount of topsoil he’s bringing in is 80 cubic yards, or four trucks. Anything more than 50 cubic yards requires a soil disturbance permit.

He’ll be creating a berm 8-10 feet wide along his fence along the western side of the property and 8-12 inches high at the center for planting trees and bushes. Other parts of his project included removing some trees and a stone edge along the other side of the soil berm for run-off water.

At Thursday night’s borough meeting, several residents came to express their concerns.

“My only reservation that I would have, if any, is what impact would this have on our quality of life on the water flow issue,” said Gerry McCaffery, a 30-year Morris Plains resident.

“The only possible impact is during construction, if the topsoil isn’t stabilized and we get a thunderstorm, we’re going to get some erosion and it’s going to go into the street and the applicant knows that he’ll have to deal with that,” said Leon Hall, Borough engineer.

McCaffery was concerned about rain run-off down the road for homes on Sunrise and Walsh Way

“There’s an area at top of property that naturally goes under the fence and you can see it‘s all eroded. We’re not touching any of that,” said Donato Zizza, who’s heading up the work. “You’re going to have the same water (run-off) or probably less because we’re going to berm up 90 percent of the yard. There is natural erosion on the property, but that’s going to stay.”

“(I just want to make sure) that when it rains, it doesn’t turn into a river,” said Resident David Sullivan

“The applicant has to comply to the recommendations of the Borough engineer … responsible for controlling dust and mud” when soil is moved on and off the property, said Gail Fraser ESQ, Borough attorney, which was part of the draft resolution.

Also, the “clean” fill brought in needed to be proven that it came from a “pristine source, such as a commercial quarry (and) the potential for elevated naturally occurring arsenic must be investigated,” according to Zizza’s application form.