By Myles Ma | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on August 16, 2016 at 7:30 AM, updated August 16, 2016 at 10:40 AM
HILLSDALE — Terri Pendergast used to enjoy walking her dog in the woods behind her house every day. She’d take a meandering path through the timber, her childhood stomping grounds, to trails leading to the Musquapsink Brook.
For Pendergast, it was a quiet sanctuary she shared with the deer, owls and other animals that made these woods their home. The woods butted up to the back of about 15 homes on Ell Road, turning yards into country oases just 25 miles from New York City.
But in June, those woods were suddenly gone, replaced by a 12-acre bald patch crisscrossed with muddy tire tracks to make way for a housing development.
