Politics & Government

Supervisors Table Decision on Vera Cruz Sewer Exemption

Ralph Christman, of 3311 Main Road East, is told to come back to the Upper Milford Board of Supervisors July 5 meeting for an answer on his request to opt out of the Vera Cruz sewer project.

At this point, no news is good news for Ralph Christman.

The Vera Cruz man recently of the ongoing . He came to last night’s Supervisor’s meeting hoping for the board's response to his request.

However, with only two of the three Supervisors in attendance last night, Christman’s appeal was tabled until the July 5 meeting when the entire board could be part of the decision. Supervisors’ Chair Daniel Mohr was absent last night.

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Supervisor Robert Sentner, who was running the meeting on Mohr’s behalf, said: “I think we should wait until Dan comes back. It’s not fair for only two of us to vote.”

Christman, 3311 Main Road East, approached the board at the June 7 meeting to request the exemption because his house sits more than 500 feet from the road and his 11-acre property has a fully functional and relatively new sand mound.

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Last night, Upper Milford Township Solicitor Marc Fisher advised the board to think carefully before allowing anyone to opt out of the sewer project.

The ordinance is really specific and does not allow for any exceptions,” Fisher said. “Once you make an exception for one person, you are going to get requests from others.”

Plus, he said, the township could open itself up to problems with those who already are connected to the public sewer system, who could claim they were in a similar situation to Christman’s before hooking up, and that they destroyed a working septic system to remain in compliance with the township’s sewer ordinance.

Fisher also said that allowing certain homeowners to opt out of the ordinance could even impact project prices for everyone else, since those prices were determined based on an estimated number of properties participating in the project.

Sentner said, “It’s our ordinance and whether I like it or not, we have to abide by our ordinance. It’s an ordinance that we wrote and we approved ourselves.”


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