TRENTON, New Jersey, October 23, 2007 (ENS) - A three-judge Appellate panel has upheld the state’s assessment of a $600,000 penalty against a developer who installed a major sewer line without first obtaining the required state permit, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram announced Friday.

The judges affirmed a $604,110 civil penalty assessed against Town and Country Developers of New Jersey, Inc. by the state Department of Environmental Protection, DEP.

The state agency assessed the penalty after Town and Country installed sewer infrastructure designed to serve a 602 unit development of town homes and single-family-dwellings in Nutley, Essex county.

The developer did the work without a permit required under the "dry sewer law" provision of the state’s Water Pollution Control Act.

In upholding the DEP's Final Agency Determination against Town and Country, the panel rejected the developer’s argument that the state-imposed civil penalty was exempted by New Jersey’s so-called Grace Period Law.

The Grace Period Law makes provisions for violations that are inadvertent or unwitting in nature, or corrected (or correctable) within a short period of time. The judges determined that, as the state had maintained, Town and Country was well aware of its obligation to obtain a DEP permit, and that its installation of a major sewer line without one was deliberate.

"We are committed to upholding the law and, simply put, the law says there will be no construction of sewers in New Jersey without a state permit," said Milgram.

DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson said, "This company's actions completely flew in the face of our comprehensive permit program that protects New Jersey's ground water and surface water supplies through the proper construction of sewers."

"We will not tolerate developers taking it upon themselves to skirt our permit program, which exists solely to protect our environment," Jackson declared.

Town and Country, headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, began the Nutley development in the late 1990s. Sanitary sewers for a portion of the project were built over a 10-day period in the fall of 1998.

But Town and Country did not file an application for the required permit with DEP until June 10, 1999, more than six months after construction of the sewer line was complete and two houses in the first construction phase of the project were built and occupied.

Town and Country obtained the permit on July 30, 1999, nearly two weeks after the sewer line was already in use.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.