BARNEGAT – Bill Brooke was puzzled when black dirt began turning up in the decorative stones of his Pinewood Estates yard earlier this year. A pine tree had once stood there, and at first, he thought the material must be debris from that. Brooke, 77, raked up the stones, carried them behind his home and began shoveling them through a screen to sift out what he called “black mucky muck.”
Then it hit him. “All of a sudden I realized this is sewage,” he said.
Brooke has lived at 116 Oak Drive since 2006. He said the square manhole lid, situated on his property among the stones, had cracked into four pieces and allowed waste to seep out. The next overflow was worse, Brooke said, leaving his backyard covered in toilet paper and debris that coated the floor of a plastic dock box.
Pinewood Estates, a mobile home community, is owned by RHP Properties, which is responsible for maintaining its private wastewater systems. Brooke used the community’s 800 after-hours number to report what had happened. “I told them, ‘I’m declaring an emergency. My backyard is overflowing with sewage. This is an emergency.’”
“Six months later, nothing has been done about that emergency except pumping the septic field across the street,” continued the frustrated resident.
Fred Doherty lives beside the open field where tanker trucks pump wastewater. He said he has watched the trucks come and go and saw foul-smelling liquid spill near his own home. “It came down and dribbled all the way down across the grass and went down into the sewer down the street,” Doherty said. “And it stunk.”
What State Records Show
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection records released under the Open Public Records Act documents complaints involving Pinewood Estates at 116 Oak Drive, as well as a later email from an RHP manager reporting that a manhole had been cleaned. The agency redacted information identifying complainants, so the records do not establish who made the reports.
The first record is a May 26 DEP communications center report. A caller said a septic system at the mobile home park was “filling up constantly” and was being pumped out rather than repaired. The report lists 116 Oak Drive, records no sewage release and marks the incident as terminated.
A second complaint was received June 3 and concerned an incident reported to have occurred May 31 at 116 Oak Drive. The caller reported that a broken sewage pipe ran beneath the property, that the owners had been told about the issue about six months earlier and that a clogged system was causing a backyard manhole to overflow every few days, leaving the yard “full of toilet paper and debris.”
DEP identified the substance as raw sewage, described it as a continuous and uncontained liquid release, and classified the matter as an unpermitted discharge affecting land. The report is an intake record reflecting what the caller reported, rather than a finding from an inspection. The released files do not include a DEP inspection report, a formal violation notice or a final closeout determination for the Oak Drive complaint.
On June 10, RHP Regional Manager Laura Cavalcante emailed DEP employee Keith Vaughn under the subject line “Pinewood Violation Closeout letter.” “This violation has been remediated,” Cavalcante wrote. “DeMigleo Septic came and cleaned up the manhole on 6/6.”
The email does not say which manhole was cleaned. The closeout letter attached to it carries a file name referencing 101 Hickory, not Oak Drive, and nothing in the released records shows whether the broken pipe described in the June complaint was repaired.
Other DEP records show Pinewood Estates has dealt with failing wastewater systems elsewhere in the community. In January 2025, DEP approved replacement of Septic System 18, a failing system serving 30 mobile homes. Pinewood Estates’ 2025 annual report said Systems 18 and 31 had malfunctioned because of field failures and were under construction.
DEP later said the facility was verbally directed to haul wastewater while systems were rebuilt to prevent an unauthorized discharge to groundwater. Those records do not tie the Oak Drive complaint to either System 18 or System 31.
Management Promises Future Repairs
RHP responded to a request for information with a statement from Joel Brown, the company’s president and chief operating officer. Brown did not identify the home site or system involved, so it is unclear whether the company’s statement refers to the overflow reported at Brooke’s property.
“RHP’s priority is to meet the needs of its residents and maintain its communities,” Brown said. “In January of this year, during a routine inspection at Pinewood Estates, an individual septic system overflow at one of the home sites was discovered. An inspection and further evaluation found that the system was beyond repair and needed to be replaced.”
“The community immediately put measures in place to have the system pumped weekly and have the waste removed until a permanent replacement could be installed,” Brown continued. “After a lengthy process, RHP received a permit from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to reconstruct the individual septic system and a contractor has been hired. Work is expected to begin in November.”
Brown’s statement says the system is pumped weekly, while Brooke said he sees pumping about every two days. RHP did not answer questions about the cause of the reported overflow, pumping costs, possible resident charges, soil or water testing, or information provided to residents.
Township’s Limited Role
Barnegat Township does not operate Pinewood Estates’ private wastewater systems. RHP Properties is responsible for maintaining them, while DEP regulates the facilities through a New Jersey Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
Committeeman Alfonso “Al” Cirulli said he has advocated for Pinewood Estates residents for years and was contacted in his capacity as a local elected official. While the township cannot take over the park’s utility system, Cirulli said it can press the owner to act. “We need to put the pressure on RHP to get in there and do what they’re supposed to do, for God’s sakes,” he said. “They’re still residents of Barnegat. For the residents, we’ll go the extra mile.”
Behind Brooke’s home is a branch of Mill Creek that eventually flows to Barnegat Bay. He said he has not seen sewage enter the water, and DEP’s intake report lists land, not water, as the affected area.
Still, the overflow reawakened a fear Brooke has carried since Superstorm Sandy. After going into a storm-damaged house coated in what turned out to be sewage, Brooke said he got fecal poisoning and had half his stomach removed. “I almost got killed by septic, and now my whole backyard’s flooded with septic,” he said.
