The Monmouth County Board of Freeholders will purchase a 30-acre property on Fort Plains Road in Howell and add the land to the Metedeconk River Greenway.
During a meeting on Nov. 20, the freeholders authorized the acquisition of the Einsiedler property at 766 Fort Plains Road, Howell, at a cost of $700,000, upon satisfactory title and environmental review, according to a resolution.
The purchase will be made for county open space preservation, natural resources conservation and public park and recreation purposes, according to the resolution.
The funds will come from the Monmouth County Open Space, Recreation, Floodplain Protection, Farmland and Historic Preservation Trust Fund. The purchase was recommended by the Board of Recreation Commissioners.
According to the Monmouth County Park System website, the Metedeconk River Greenway, between Freehold and Howell, is a 444-acre greenway that protects water quality and wildlife habitat along the Metedeconk River, a natural border between Monmouth and Ocean counties.
The greenway helps protect and buffer floodplains from adjacent land use and development. The park system is preserving land along the Metedeconk stream corridor in conjunction with similar efforts in the Ocean County portion of the watershed. Currently, there is no established parking for the greenway, according to the website.
In other county business involving Howell, the freeholders authorized an application for state funding for the reconstruction of bridge HL-45 on county Route 524 (Allaire Road) over Mingamahone Brook.
According to a resolution, “funding assistance for the improvement of structurally deficient and/or functionally obsolete bridges is available from the New Jersey Department of Transportation under its Fiscal Year 2019 Local Bridges, Future Needs program which appropriated $47.3 million for used by New Jersey’s 21 counties.”
Monmouth County is eligible to receive $5.611 million from the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund to address its local bridges, according to the resolution. The county engineer has recommended that the freeholders apply for funding and enter into an agreement with the state for the reconstruction of bridge HL-45.
The freeholders took action on the engineer’s recommendation by authorizing the grant application.
