Avalon man pleads guilty and gets a fine for illegal dune-scaping

A man who was cited by New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection last January after having leveled portions of the protected landscape around his Avalon home pleaded guilty to a municipal code violation Jan. 27.

Via Zoom, Vahan H. Gureghian told borough court Judge Andrew J. Cafiero that the removal of native vegetation and its replacement with sod was ”inadvertent.”

In October 2023, DEP inspectors saw that a “lawn” had taken the place of 8,470 square feet of undeveloped ground where the state’s Coastal Area Facility Review Act restricts such alterations.

As part of the plea agreement, Gureghian — who owns a company that manages charter schools — will pay a $2,000 fine, and donate $13,000 to the borough’s Environmental Trust Fund.

“We had laid sod down on a portion of the property inadvertently in violation of the code,” he told the judge. The sod was already there when he received the certificate of occupancy, what he thought was “a tacit approval,” Gureghian said.

Cafiero described himself as a lifelong resident of Cape May County, and concerned about the natural environmental of the Shore.

“I do have some concerns about what happened” on the defendant’s property, the judge said.

But Cafiero noted that the state had approved the remediation work it ordered Gureghian to perform on the site, and that New Jersey and the defendant’s lawyer, George Morris, had “worked things out amicably” between them.

Morris said his client’s remediation “cost tens of thousands of dollars,” and the DEP chose not to levy additional fines.

A DEP spokesperson said the department does “not normally comment on enforcement matters and/or litigation.”

The case drew the attention of local residents concerned that development in the borough, which boasts some of the Shore’s priciest real estate, is erasing local character and endangering distinctive features such as the high dunes.

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Elaine Scattergood, whose walk-up request to file a petition with the court as an interested party to the Gureghian case was rejected by the judge, is a longtime Avalon resident alarmed by the borough’s ritzy direction.

“I wasn’t very pleased” by the plea agreement, she said after the hearing.

”He got his wrist slapped,” said Scattergood, a year-round resident who spent part of her childhood in Avalon. “Avalon allows all these monster houses to be built, but we are not allowed to touch the dunes [the way] they did on that property.”

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“We can talk about remediation but we know it’s never the same,” said Martha Wright, also a longtime resident.

Wright said she doubts anyone would be deterred from illegal landscaping or other alterations in the dunes or elsewhere because of the plea agreement.

Barbara Stout, who’s had a cottage in Avalon for 40 years, said she doubted the plea agreement would have much of an impact beyond the one case.

“So the defendant had to put some [vegetation] back,” she said. “That means nothing.”