LAVALLETTE — The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case later this year regarding whether state license approval for a 295-foot dock located at 83 Pershing Blvd. was in violation of New Jersey’s riparian rights laws.
Save Barnegat Bay, a nonprofit that works to preserve the Barnegat Bay Watershed, filed an amicus brief in the matter of P.T. Jibsail Family Limited Partnership, alleging that the dock, which is managed by P.T. Jibsail, “has sparked widespread concern from residents and environmental advocates alike over its unprecedented length, navigation hazards and disregard for legal planning requirements,” according to a press release from the organization sent on Monday.
P.T. Jibsail Family Limited Partnership is registered in Wyoming as a Limited Partnership-Domestic in good standing. Patricia Tager-Geffner is listed as general partner. She could not be reached for comment. Attempts to reach attorney for P.T. Jibsail, Amie C. Kalac of Cullen Dykman in Princeton, also were not successful.
The brief from Save Barnegat Bay argues that the dock’s approval violates New Jersey’s riparian rights laws because it “extends well beyond the pierhead line established by state law” in 1891.
In New Jersey, “riparian rights” are rights granted to owners of properties adjacent to riparian lands — that is, the “ocean, bays, tidal sections of rivers and creeks and…marshlands inundated by the tide,” according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
The use and zoning of these lands are governed by the Tidelands Resource Council (TRC), the 12-member, governor-appointed regulatory body that sets pierhead lines and administers the sale and leasing of tidelands, including for the construction of private docks. According to a DEP regulation, any dock at which a boat is moored must be at least four feet from the bottom of the body of water so as not to disturb the protected habitat of marine vegetation in the area.
According to a May 2024 opinion from the New Jersey Superior Court’s Appellate Division by Judge Jessica Mayer, Judge Mary Gibbons Whipple and Judge Lorraine M. Augostini, “the tidelands license,” granted originally in 2018, “allowed Jibsail to occupy sufficient tidelands to construct a 168-foot dock extension, resulting in a 300-foot-long dog-legged dock protruding into Barnegat Bay.”
When, in September 2022, P.T. Jibsail had to file for an amended license due to the dock being constructed 1.7 feet outside the license area boundary, Janine Morris Trust, a family trust that owns the neighboring home at 85 Pershing Blvd., appealed the modification and the original 2017 license, objecting to the dock’s length.
The court affirmed in 2022 that the TRC has the legal authority to set or adjust pierhead lines through individual licenses, as it did in the case of 83 Pershing Blvd.
The appellants argue that the TRC did not grant the license legally, claiming that it “unilaterally” made the decision without consulting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the DEP, which it is legally required to do, according to state statute 12:13-9.
A representative of the TRC did not return a request for comment by press time Thursday.
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