New Jersey Acts Saved from Repeal ACTS SAVED 15 § 5-8(1)

1. That if the owners of a majority of the number of acres of any body or tract of marsh or swamp exposed to the overflow of the tide and capable of being laid dry and put in a proper state for improvement by one general bank or dam are desirous to improve the same, and the whole cannot agree, such owners, desirous of improving as aforesaid, after giving three weeks' previous notice to those who refuse or neglect to join in such improvement, by notice left at each of their places of abode or by advertising their intentions in three of the most public places in the neighborhood at least three weeks previous thereto, may apply to the court of common pleas of the county in which such marsh doth lie, or, in case a county line shall run through the marsh or swamp proposed to be improved as aforesaid, to the court of common pleas nearest thereto; on which application the members of such court, who are disinterested and unconnected with the parties, shall and they are hereby required to appoint by certificate, under their hands and seals, three or more judicious and disinterested men, well acquainted with banking and improving tide meadows, as commissioners; which commissioners, after giving notice of the time and place of meeting, shall view the premises and hear the parties, and if they then think proper, lay out the bank, dam, sluices, floodgates or other works necessary for securing the marsh or swamp from the overflow of the tide in such place or places as may appear most safe and beneficial to the whole of the owners of the marsh or swamp intended to be secured from the overflow of the tide and make an actual survey thereof, describing the place of beginning, courses and distances and places where the sluice or sluices or floodgates shall be laid, and where the bank or dam shall join the fast land; and also fix a name for the company and appoint the time and place of their first meeting and deliver a certificate of their proceedings signed by a majority of them to the clerk of the court from which they receive their appointment, which clerk shall forthwith record the said certificate in the road-book kept in his office; provided, always, that no navigable water shall be stopped by virtue of this act, the use of which navigation may, in the opinion of the majority of the men appointed as aforesaid, be of more than half the value to the inhabitants of the neighborhood that the improvement of the meadow would be to the owners thereof; and provided, also, that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize the stopping out of any creek or river capable of navigation for shallops or flats that can carry eight cords of wood.