State: More research needed on school site
Further archeological tests needed for state to approve land swap
BY JESSICA SMITH
Staff Writer

MONROE - Plans for the land swap needed to build a new high school have hit another snag.

On July 5, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) requested further research to be done at the Thompson Park site where the school is slated to be built, to ensure that the Leni Lenape Bethel Mission Settlement did not exist there.

"They want what is called a phase two archaeological investigation," Assistant Township Attorney Peg Schaffer said.

The request is the second from the state asking that Grubb & Associates, the archeological firm hired by the township, conduct additional research. Grubb has twice reported that there is no evidence to suggest that the Bethel settlement was on the site.

"Grubb thought what they found indicated that Bethel wasn't there. Now it's becoming sort of a bureaucratic tug-of-war," Schaffer said.

The land swap involves the township trading 172 acres of property for 35 acres of Thompson Park, on which the new high school would be built. The township would also have to pay $1.127 million to cover the higher value assessed on the parkland. The release of restrictions from the Green Acres division of the DEP is required before the diversion can take place.

Though the Cranbury-based archaeological firm stated in its report that the settlement, which dates back to 1746, was located elsewhere, there are still questions as to whether the findings are reliable.

Grubb concluded that Bethel was located on the former Redmond Farm, adjoining the Lane family property, where an orchard and a spring once existed in the 1840s. That tract is approximately a half-mile north of where the high school is proposed.

The Bethel settlement was led by Presbyterian minister David Brainerd, who converted the 200 Leni-Lenape natives who lived there to the Christian faith. Consisting of a church, a school and 40 houses, Bethel dismantled in 1801 because of negative feelings toward the Lenape from white men during the Seven Years' War, according to Preservation New Jersey's Web site. The organization included Bethel on its "10 Most Endangered Sites" list in 2006.

Questions as to the validity of Grubb's findings arose soon after William Liebeknecht, president of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey, sent a letter to Dorothy Guzzo of the DEP's Historic Preservation Office. Liebeknecht stated in the letter that he did not think the testing at the site was comprehensive enough to prove the settlement did not exist there, and he expressed his belief that it had once stood on the site, according to Richard Webster, an attorney with the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic.

Richard Walling, who was consulted by Grubb during the investigation, also takes issue with the firm's conclusions. According to his research, the settlement was indeed located on the slated high school site. Earlier this year, Walling nominated the site for the state and national historic registers.

Like Liebeknecht, Walling said Grubb's investigation only scratched the surface of the site. With the shovel test pits dug 50 feet apart, the testing could easily have overlooked a large number of artifacts that would evidence the settlement's existence there, according to Walling.

"The time for equivocation and parsing of propaganda should be over regarding the issue of Bethel Indian Town," Walling said.

Back in March, Ian Burrow, vice president of the Trenton-based archaeological firm Hunter Research, wrote to Ilene Grossman-Bailey of Grubb & Associates to provide input on the phase one investigation into the site. The letter stressed the significance of the settlement, and brought forth a point that had not yet been addressed.

"After the mission was formally closed, many of its former citizens dispersed into the immediate vicinity and took up residence in the surrounding woods, suggesting that even if the lands within the project area do fall outside of the bounds of the original Bethel Mission Settlement, archaeological evidence of the mission's residents may still be found within the project area," Burrow wrote.

Grubb's survey consisted of 600 1-foot-in-diameter shovel test pits, a 5-by-5-foot excavation area, and metal detection and geophysical surveys. To supplement the physical aspects of the study, Grubb conducted interviews and other research on the land. The work cost the township over $46,000, according to Schaffer.

"We are following regulations," Schaffer said. "We hope to get beyond all these efforts standing in the way of getting the high school [built]."

Included in the efforts Schaffer spoke of were those of Webster, who has been representing the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, New Jersey Public Interest Group and local citizens group Park Savers in its appeal of a February 2006 decision by the State House Commission to grant approval for the land diversion.

Though the Appellate Division of the N.J. Superior Court recently ruled in the township's favor, Webster is pressing on with his challenge to the decision. He submitted a petition for certification June 29 in order to appeal the decision again.

"If we are legally precluded from doing anything by law, we will abide by it, but I don't think that's going to be the case," Schaffer said.