MIDDLESEX TWP — A representative from Victor Wetzel Associates shared final documents for the Grey Hawk planned residential development (PRD) with the township supervisors at a meeting Wednesday night.

The process is the culmination of a discussion more than two years in the making on the proposed Grey Hawk development near Overbrook Road.

Earlier in 2021, Butler County Common Pleas Judge S. Michael Yeager signed a consent order that granted the appeal from Grey Hawk of the 2019 denial of preliminary approval for the PRD. The order was seen as a compromise between interested parties: the township, the developers and the Glade Run Lake Conservancy.

The ruling instructed Grey Hawk to modify its plans to divert potentially harmful runoff into Glade Run Lake as well as to install environmentally friendly designs that do not disrupt bird migration patterns.

Steven Victor, a partner with Victor Wetzel Associates, showed the board maps of the PRD that included plans to divert 20 cubic feet per second of runoff to an area downstream of the Glade Run Lake. Of the existing 66 cubic feet per second of runoff, 20 will be diverted, 19 will run towards the lake and the rest will be discharged into the ground slowly over time.“What the conservancy wanted to do was to make sure that that water that is going that way is properly treated, so that it's clean water, but also reduce the volume of that water so there would not be additional scouring of the stream bed during a peak storm event,” Victor said. “We're going to take the discharge from the bio retention (stormwater management facilities) and run that down Overbrook Road quite a distance all the way to the outfall from the dam, so we're discharging downstream.”The plan, likely with some revisions after engineer discussion, will be voted on at the Oct. 6 Middlesex Township Board of Supervisors work session meeting, which has been moved to 6:30 p.m.

Siggy Pehel, president of the Glade Run Lake Conservancy, praised everyone who has been involved in deliberating and working on the plan so far.“I just wanted to thank you, and all these folks have been working to try and get to this point. There'll be more discussion on this,” he said.Pehel said that the addition of environmentally-friendly lampposts was a win for the conservancy because the area is a migratory path for birds.“The bottom line here is that the consent order enabled them to build, but the judge was emphatic that he wanted something worked out between the three parties, meaning the township, conservancy and the developer, to protect the lake,” he said.He still hopes for some further refinement of the plan as the township and the engineers discuss, including changes related to adding additional vegetation in the development.“(I'm hoping) that we get what we want environmentally to the highest level to protect that lake,” Pehel said. “Nothing else is going to be agreeable to me. I want the engineers to work it out, and they all know where I'm coming from. Stick with the consent order, and work out the engineering, not at the lowest level, but at the highest level to protect the lake.”