Legal Win Secures 300-Foot Water Quality Buffers In Poconos
Monroe County Court dismisses challenge to Coolbaugh Township Riparian Buffer Ordinance
Last week, PennFuture helped secure a legal victory for a local municipality's protective water quality buffers in the Poconos region. The Monroe County Court of Common Pleas granted the request of Coolbaugh Township, PennFuture, Tobyhanna Creek/Tunkhannock Creek Watershed Association, and Tobyhanna Conservation Association to dismiss developers’ challenge to an ordinance requiring a 300-foot buffer around all streams, lakes, ponds, and wetlands in the Township.
Coolbaugh Township sits atop the Pocono Plateau in eastern Pennsylvania and is home to a great wealth of pristine water resources, including the headwaters of the High Quality Tobyhanna Creek. This stream and its many Exceptional Value and High Quality tributaries are kept clean, in part, by the Township’s numerous wetlands, which filter pollutants, cool waters, and provide invaluable wildlife habitat. The exceptional quality of its water resources makes Coolbaugh Township a haven for anglers, paddlers, and wildlife enthusiasts.
Coolbaugh Township is also a prime target for development due to its location along I-380, its easy access to I-80 and its relative proximity to population centers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. In recent years, development in the Township has taken the form of a rapid influx of large-scale warehouses, distribution centers, and fulfillment centers, often along the banks of the Township’s invaluable water resources.
Recognizing that the vast acreage of impervious surface generated by large-scale development of any type poses a significant threat to the quality of nearby water resources, Coolbaugh Township took action to protect its irreplaceable streams, lakes, ponds, and wetlands. In August 2023, the Township Board of Supervisors enacted an ordinance requiring that future large-scale development leave an undeveloped 300-foot buffer around all surface waters to protect them from degradation. This ordinance doubled the previous buffer requirement of 150 feet.
In May 2024, two industrial landowners/developers, Orchard BJK Company, LLC and Pocono Mountain Industries, Inc., sued Coolbaugh Township, claiming that the buffer ordinance is arbitrary, irrational, and improperly targeted at their developments. The court granted PennFuture, and our clients TCTCWA and TCA, the right to intervene in the case in support of the buffer ordinance. The developers’ claims were based on speculation that the buffer requirement would harm their ability to sell or develop their properties in the future. Only one of the landowner/developers had attempted to sell or develop any property since the Township passed the ordinance, and the Township had not yet determined how to apply the buffer requirement to the one project that had been proposed. The Court held that, under these circumstances, the question of whether and how the landowner/developers were harmed by the ordinance was merely “academic” and “hypothetical” and that any challenge to the ordinance would have to wait until the Township actually applied it to the landowner/developers’ property.
The Court’s decision means that Coolbaugh Township’s exceptional watershed protection measures will remain in place—and that it is now up to the Township to enforce them if and when developers propose specific projects.
“PennFuture is happy to see that the Exceptional Value headwaters of the Poconos Mountain region will continue to be protected,” said PennFuture Staff Attorney Brigitte Meyer, “and we urge the Coolbaugh Township Board of Supervisors to uphold these protective measures as it considers future development proposals. We hope more municipalities step up like Coolbaugh Township to protect critical water resources, and we will continue to fight alongside them as they do.”
The landowners/developers have until July 27 to appeal the Monroe County Court’s decision to the statewide court of appeals.