County Agency ‘Won’t Budge’ on Opening 6.5-Acre Ortley Beach Lot to Public

Toms River officials last week approved an annual agreement with the Ocean County Utilities Authority allowing the township’s lifeguards to park there, as well as store some equipment, at the agency’s site in Ortley Beach this summer. But residents’ longtime requests for the mostly-unused property to be opened up for recreational purposes is no closer to becoming a reality.

The 6.5-acre tract between 8th and Fielder avenues north-to-south and Route 35 and Washington Avenue east-to-west, is a former sewerage treatment facility. Decades ago, it was owned by the now-defunct Toms River Sewerage Authority. It was ultimately sold by the township to the Ocean County Utilities Authority, which took over sewerage treatment from most municipal governments over the course of the years. The site, however, is no longer in active use except for a pumping system that takes up just a small portion of the land.

The Ocean County Utilities Authority (OCUA) site in Ortley Beach, N.J., May 2023. (Photo: Shorebeat)

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“The township sold it to them for a pile of dough, and when they consolidated, they didn’t need the site anymore,” said Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill. “At one time it was a big treatment plant, but then they decided to put everything into a main underneath the bay and they no longer needed the treatment facility.”

Indeed, sewerage from the barrier island is now pumped via submarine pipeline to a larger, centralized county facility on the mainland. One of those pumps is located within the site, and there is also an electrical main that runs under the property, officials have said, but the vast majority of the property is unoccupied. Residents have occasionally mounted campaigns to either have the township buy back the land, or at least convince OCUA to open up the unused portion for recreational purposes and remove blocks of brown fencing which some consider an eyesore.

The requests from residents reached a peak after Superstorm Sandy, when other recreational facilities in the neighborhood were not accessible, but faced pushback from county leaders. Some even disagreed with the premise of the then-township council adopting a resolution calling on the county to make any space available for the public.

The Ocean County Utilities Authority (OCUA) site in Ortley Beach, N.J., May 2023. (Photo: Shorebeat)

The Ocean County Utilities Authority (OCUA) site in Ortley Beach, N.J., May 2023. (Photo: Shorebeat)

OCUA is governed by a board of commissioners led by former Lacey Township Mayor John C. Parker, who Hill said “won’t budge” on allowing recreation at the site.

“I even told John Parker I’d name the park after him,” Hill joked.

While the annual parking agreement was unanimously approved, residents – more than a decade after Sandy – have not seen the inside of the site’s fence since debris was stored there following the storm. And it does not appear as if the circumstances will change any time soon.

The Ocean County Utilities Authority (OCUA) site in Ortley Beach, N.J., May 2023. (Photo: Shorebeat)

The Ocean County Utilities Authority (OCUA) site in Ortley Beach, N.J., May 2023. (Photo: Shorebeat)

“They’re sitting on some prime real estate and they could make a boat-load of money if they sold it, but we really wanted to use it as a park, at least over the summer,” Hill said.