subscri likes pursuant to the open public meetings act notice of this meeting was sent to Cranberry press the Trenton Times and the home News Tribune on January 5th 2024 posted on the bulletin board posted on the Township's website and sent to those who requested a copy of this notice a roll call John reinfelder here Josh caho here John cring here daab leaderman here okay Becky is out Jason milenberg here Teresa viaro here Dela georgees is absent and our newest member Steph hster here alrighty we're going to look at the minutes from the March 18th meeting and please let me know if there are any changes I have one change I think the we said that the the stream cleanup which is this Saturday was starts at 10 but I think it starts at 9: so we just make that in the minutes so hopefully everyone will be there Village Park that's the only thing I had motion to approve second second call um John reinfelder yes Josh gut yes John cring abstain Gabe leaderman yes is not here Jason milenberg yes Teresa varo yes George is not here and Stephen hster yes okay so we are going to start with um the reports but I think it will be the reports will be short I don't think we have a representative from the township committee right here so we're going to table that for the moment DRC I was in attendance and uh there was a project presented on a development on 130 Route 130 where there currently is the The Village pump liquor store um it's going to be redeveloped with the lot next door and the DRC is sort of a preliminary to the planning board to just sort of discuss issues and also bring to the attention of the developers some issues they might want to think about and maybe revise um there was a lot of good discussion about their plans both architecturally and uh harmonizing with the town and uh some environment Al points that I made and I think they were taken to heart but that will come before the planning board later I'm assuming eventually sometime okay um planning board did you have a a report there was one application at the planning board this month let me lean into this thing um uh which involved uh uh carberry's own um marijuana grow operation out at uh I think it was 8A a Corporate Center uh they were given a couple uh temporary uh structures and they installed a generator without a permit and a couple other things had gone on um and uh in order to make it right they came to planning board presented it as a uh as permanent uh looking for approval and uh they did not get it they will be back environmentally um you know concerns just came came from the generator which was a uh which was a diesel generator it had no uh Safeguard against spill it had a couple uh manufactured safeguards but nothing on property no spill plan all those were requested of the applicant at the time so uh we hope to have a little bit more when they come back in front of planning board in a month or two okay thank you for that report Barbara we can Circle back to the township if you're ready okay okay oops first of all look at how full the EC is this is terrific yes okay I just needed to say that okay um uh yeah so I'm sorry I missed uh the DRC heard a little bit of the planning board thank you um so my first thing was welcome to uh the newest newcomer and um just wanted to give you a heads up you know just letting you know this isn't EC related but it might be just for you guys to know so the um I carry this everywhere this is the bike Network plan we have reached out to the county to um to uh get the signs in they had preliminary yes but now we need the official yes that g way signs are going to be put up around town um to it's like a welcoming to the town but also to slow traffic down okay and um you know this is this is an easy thing because maybe people might want feel safer on the roads they bite walk more Etc so um One sign will be going on um in Plainsboro it's already been ordered Plainsboro Road um just just at the edge of the 25 um uh miles per hour so that is happening it's only taken a few years um the other thing is um not sure if I said it at the last one but we submitted the um Community energy plan grant that was submitted um the other thing is the I don't know if you want to talk about it now Teresa or not but we met with students and I'll let you report out about the inlets we didn't did we that before yeah that was before the last one okay so go ahead um we have the um abbreviated list of Municipal inlets that we need to map so we reached out to the high school kids to pick a time to meet and we're I haven't heard back from them so that's still in in progress and I don't know if you guys have seen on the inlets um uh storm water inlets that there are these no dumping signs um so that one of the things that they're going to be checking for to see if these medallions are still on the inlets and they will be using glue and these medallions um that's one of the things that they'll be looking for so lots of Show and Tell today um the other thing that you may want to just know is um that parks and wreck are now going now joined officially the ordinance was passed the second reading was passed so that's an official thing um we're in the process of you know choosing the members um you know they all submitted and now you know we will have a couple of members um we had a few more members which is good than um than required at this point and um any questions I think that's it any questions if this point okay okay I'm looking forward to hearing actually I for crew go ahead I have one um you know your bumper sticker or yeah the bumper sticker that I had noticed about the um the four feet the four feet I saw a big sign it wasn't a permanent one it was like a flexible fabcy one um I really kind of like that sign is there a way we can get that at least as a heads up um when some the other signs go in because it's for some reason it just it gives a where a different message for taking care around cyclists is it like a bumper sticker or is it no it was it was like a it was by a road I can't remember where I've seen it but it was your bumper sticker so I have a bumper sticker on my on my car and um It's like a go give uh bikers pedestrians for fee it's the law so um I don't know where we put that but you know whenever I see something I take a picture maybe next if you pass it again well yeah I'll try I was driving at the time right didn't it yeah but it just it was eye-catching and it's just a different message and I think people are you know they can get kind of tone to our current message so I thought it was a good sign so if you ever see anything like that out there maybe Bor I could we could reach out to B's Transportation Center they name that they the ruers university arm of Transportation so um yeah and the other thing about the bicycle Network too is I'm asking the county to see whether we can get Main Street somehow they could figure out a way to stripe it or or improve the biking because we have old Tren road that is being striped or has been striped for the bike um plan they're they're finishing up Old Trenton Road now have you seen that did they stripe it because I haven't been on that road yet they were supposed to do that no I don't think they have good okay so they're gonna actually stripe it like officially Lane yeah Lane um and then we have plans BR roads so it wouldn't it be nice to connect the to so just a minor point barara every County Road that uh has the bike path approved to it you're going to the plan is to put a sign at the entrance to the township is that correct uh well it's all on here there's five so I could give this to you and you can take a look at it if you want yeah but the county has to approve the county roads okay thanks okay great thank you Barbara so we're going to Old business uh should move pretty easily stream cleanup this Saturday April 20th at 9 a.m. in meeten Village Park uh I'll give a brief update on the information board I have um submitted and and there the projects are I haven't picked them up yet uh they've been printed and laminated for most of the stuff that we want to display at the um cranber Brook preserve information board ask um but there's room to improve that and then of course once it's up there then the ideas will also flow so we'll you know it'll be a living thing and I think we should keep bringing ideas I love the idea about the backside you know when you're leaving did you see you know these Critters and things I think that's a great idea I didn't do anything about that yet so that's a wide open space of the birding thing I didn't I haven't gotten anything to so I think there's a lot of things we can do there um so hopefully I will find a time to this week maybe to put up the preliminary stuff and that will also probably generate comments from our neighbors as they see it walking by but I think that's going to be important to get that visual going okay is there more on the mapping uh Teresa not really okay so we're we're good with that oh so so we reached out to the high school students did you hear back from them yet no I haven't heard back okay okay they can be slow to communicate sometimes sometimes well and and you know you know how that works um okay with theang one with the storm water mapping um I know of a couple of communities in Middle sex County uh closer to the Coast that have adopt a catch Basin programs so neighbors that live where there's a catch Basin or an inlet in front of their home you know just to make sure that there's no brush or anything like that and I thought that would be something neat to see if we could try and do here in terms of you know you have a catch Bas in in front of your home just you know make sure that there's no Twigs or leaves or branches just kind of like a little visual check go out sweep them away you know make sure nothing gets in there so just kind of a little food for thought um don't know how we could get something like that going but just wanted to put that out there that's that's a good idea um so we'll have to think about you know a good way to publicize that um so maybe we can yeah I know I know such like like Perth Amboy I know has has that as part of and they have an ordinance and a proclamation and stuff like that so to generate those kind of things and present it and say hey there's other people people doing it this is how they're implementing it and how maybe we can try and do that here is it a fundraiser for them at all not 100% but we could look into that I think that's good I think it's I mean it's similar to the um the garden idea to engage you know the town into awareness and and also helping us helping us pertho has a big bigger problem because they have to combine so so Gabe are you talking about around town where we have these storm water inlets that we have people who sort of adopt that and take care of it or is it something broader than than inlets no it's that's exactly what it would be just focused on the inlets yes so if you have an inlet in front of your house and you got trees like I do and you get leaves and branches that fall down when we have windy nights and rainy nights just you know make sure there's nothing in front of it so it won't impede any water getting into it unfortunately I don't have any inlets on my street but I I wouldn't be opposed to you know something a little closer to you know Main Street where there may be one that somebody may not want to do but yeah yeah I would just second that I think that sounds like a great idea maybe we could call it the cranberry storm squad or something you know we send good it could be something that is also more of a rapid response right sometimes in the summertime we get these thunderstorms that come out of nowhere all of a sudden you you know you have a deluge of three four inches in like two hours you know DPW is not going to get out to do that so you know if we had a text chain or a phone chain have just go out and make sure there's nothing blocking the storms that could be a big savings and part of an ms4 permit is storm water maintenance right so wouldn't that be considered part of a storm water maintenance program oh we may be hearing about this a little bit so maybe we should hold that thought because we're going to have an expert soon what a segue it's a perfect segue um but I think the discussion will you know should and will continue um because that's a great idea uh okay we had uh presented to us the the proclamation and I believe we are recommending this to the township committee is my understanding so we're recommending that the township take up this Proclamation uh it was circulated after the last meeting thank thank you Dela for putting it together and um it it reads very well um I don't know if there were any last minute uh comments or suggestions on it we could um consider those otherwise um I consider it coming sort of as a motion to us to be um to be voted on if there's no other discussion about it I just want to yeah no I just want to point out that thank you for bringing that to our attention because it is a very cool thing to do and I actually went and certified my property um which was uh took like all of five minutes um they ask you know a bunch of general questions as to if you have you know bird feeders or bird baths or cover natural cover or man-made cover and things like that um food sources uh you know places for for wintering for Animals uh and you check off a couple of boxes here and there and you're property becomes listed in this database and when cranberry gets enough then our town can become certified and you know they send you a little card in the mail um and you know looking for donations obviously which is cool but um you know and then you get a little lawn you can get a little lawn sign to put on your lawn to say that your you know your property is certified and you know it's just a kind of another way to you know get the community interactive um I know you're working on some stuff with the school which is really cool so more of those things contribute more points if I understand correctly so I don't know I thought it was a neat thing to do and it was very easy to do um and I have a flyer here if anybody wants to take a look at it um just some more information I can pass that around and I should say I didn't I apologize I didn't properly introduce that because it is we had a discussion last but uh this is you know specifically to designate you know Proclaim may as um Garden for wildlife month to raise attention to the idea of certifying On's Garden um so I should have I'm I apologize I should have introduced that a little bit more thoroughly but but thank you that's good that you did that yeah I did want to just jump in um on this topic uh one I wanted to add that as of May 1st there is a 20% off certific the price of certification and 20% off off the sign I just found out about that today um and also if you have any ideas for community outreach that you've always wanted to do May would be the month to do it um just to keep the energy going for that month we have two events that were kind of piggybacking off of in the community in April um I plan to have a table or at least information for residents at the stream cleanup and also at the library for a couple of hours during theity yard sale that people are out and about that day um but for May um still open to suggestions of brainstorming um uh a restoration project like maybe walking the trails and picking up any trash that we might see or even something like pulling invasives that was one question I had as a new EC member sort of like what the policy is around you know walking a trail and seeing like a little mini patch of garlic mustard like are we allowed to touch or pull those types of things or you know I I saw recently on all about cranberry a resident post like oh look at this really awesome Trail that's right in the middle of town and the first picture was just like a field of lower celadine which is just horribly invasive and toxic to humans and animals so it was like oh beautiful these little yellow flowers but like not knowing that they're like horrible right so it's just the worst like it's just like the saddest photo actually of all time so I was just wondering sort of what the rules are about that kind of thing and so how we can organize like a residents to get out there and contribute to maybe bringing natives back yeah I mean I hesitate to speak up about rules because I'm still learning them myself um to be perfectly honest but you know this commission has had a tradition of uh supervising the upkeep of The Preserves I'll put it that way um um now in terms of picking things in The Preserves it's probably not the intention of what the idea of The Preserves but I'm going to have to look into that it may not even be specified frankly um we did have programs over the years and Barbara knows very well to remove invasives that has happened and and should continue but we can't keep up with with that particular one um so yeah right so could we do it as like an event type of thing like if we had like a Master Gardener and someone from EC and then we tell everyone to me at a certain date in time we're going to go pick garlic mustard or something I'm just saying you have okay it's a thing right it's just I think it's like Barbara's saying I mean you just don't want to just folks taking it on themselves and not knowing what they're pulling exactly right exactly right so you want that expertise along for the ride so that I think we all kind of would figure out some locations besides the village because should come up with some locations because we usually get I don't know how many signed up but we usually get 40 to 50 people and we certainly don't need 4 You Knowle wood there's a whole bunch of stuff there as you enter the town I was going ask PW but you know coming up wants to do but you guys come up with some other places because this going be a lot of people anyone well so um so we divide them and say you go here you go there okay joh then you say okay I'm going I'm going over to the Firehouse Firehouse doesn't have much stuff yeah um you know over oning things we've been over on Old tring it over there live on the millstone River mean Pino can use a little bit pin yeah okay cwy road so then people would have to rejoin over there we'd say let's some of you come over there and I'll see you there in five minutes or something okay but the areas that are chosen for adults verus children yeah I just I because I passed a neighbor and she said oh yeah though all the cup Scouts are gonna be there swarms swarms of cut Scout is that the technical term right for a large group yes a swarm always Barbara do you have a list of sites that have been done in the past I'm trying to remember the first one that I was at I think there was like it was email [Music] um there's all sorts of big things that they've found you know but those big things are thank good but thinking mstone out by milstone Park I don't know if that's still yeah take find some sites if people have sites maybe they could send me ideas or just bring ideas to on Saturday if you're going to be there but I will certainly do a little reconnaissance to try to okay sounds good um there are ants crawling all over my computer and I don't know why that is it's environmental you're that okay so everyone's sharing the ants um all right so we are still discussing by the way uh the proclamation to establish may as Wildlife month um so is there any further discussion of the of us recomending the proclamation motion is on the floor seeing none the motion is now available for a vote of this Commission John reinfelder yes Josh gut yes John cting yes Gabe leaderman yes Jason milenberg yes Teresa viaro yes Dela Georges yes and Steven hster yes not sure if we're supposed to say Yes or yay or we'll we'll discuss that I all in favor I thank you okay we'll get there we'll get there um all right we're getting to the exciting part thank you for being patient um in the public new business and we have two items one is the project to establish a monarch waste and I think that's a wonderful idea monarchs um but of course I just have a tiny little backyard so that would be um I think an interesting thing and I think you're going to present some slides which I have I have those so let's see if we can beam those up let's see is it okay let me get the is it that this is the silver award present okay thank you so much and please when you I think this is this is Kelly and Jane all right and I'll make this a show okay are you ready to begin all right okay hi I'm Kelly sensey uh and I'm Jan Berkery and we are seventh grade cross Scouts working on our silver award uh can you go to the next slide oh sorry that's me so what are we doing we are planning to do a monarch R station in the cr r Brook preserve uh monarchs while they migrate uh this will give them a place to rest and reproduce uh we are going to plant native plants in the brook preserve because they are um they will grow better and sorry and they won't interfere with other plant we hope to start planting in late April through early May and there will be information about our project displayed on a kiosk that you can find in it's about the middle of the Monarch way station there's a photo up there and our project is actually continuing a former Girl Scout project where they made a similar pollinator garden and Scout and boy scouts too and then on the right there's a list of the plants that we hope to use there are two and the rest are native nectar plants okay should I go on yes thank you uh so where is it that's the school and then that's The cranber Preserve and it's cirle there uh yeah it looks like it got a little messed up but that's okay so why do we do this project our project is designed to help the butterflies and their populations because as you might know some of them are endangered and we're going to help them by using milked and as said in its name milked is a weed which means when Farmers see it they might try to kill it and since butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed that um harms their population we also hope to inform the community about our project through events like the National Night Out and cranberry day uh who it got cut off but uh who's been helping us Dela has been helping us she's our Girl Scout adviser Dr rers has been helping us um she's our overall project advisor and we have received assistance from Master Gardeners Susan tar and Jessica arens so we plan to sustain our project through multiple ways the first of which being the Girl Scouts themselves we plan to ask the younger troops as well as some of the olders if they're willing to help look over and water the um was station in kind of like a schedule we also hope to ask the cranberry wck camp for help and their um their help would be very useful during the summer months like July and August where schools out of session and watering would be very important and we've already received some um offers from school clubs such as Peak to help look over the area and water it we're very involved in school so it wouldn't be a problem getting the C yes thank you uh does anyone have questions any questions for our presenters uh you did mention just at the end one of the groups is Peak oh it's a club maybe you could explain that a little it's um it's a club that I go to and we talk about current events and uh perspective equity in action club uh yeah and we did you know like by the library there's those flowers and like yeah the Holocaust Memorial like we didn't like do that but we helped with that and we do the diaper Drive every year uh to so like it's just like you know current events and like what kind of a community outreach club and then kindness club would also like yeah so I imagine I mean you're going to this is for this year right yeah like now a late April May we put in a request for like PL plant donations at ruers yeah uh and the plants are in D they said that the plants are like starting to come up I think but we should have them gotten to us fairly soon like mid May so sometime around then maybe the sides were not it's okay correct okay so you're going to get the plants from the ruers uh yes got green houses I see and then um and what and you have the I see I have your project here costs and so forth how is that going fundraising wise is that part of this wasn't there solar land oh yeah there's like um we're g to plan to reach out to like solar Landscapes which will help fund okay so you may need to get that squared away I guess before you get the plants from ruers maybe okay all right yes that was very nice thank you um I don't know much about the milked um is it fairly drop resistant like when you talk about needing to water it how much do you think you're going to need to be out there in the summer and how are you going to get the water there so there are different types of milkweed the types that we're going to be using are well one of them is called swamp milked which as you can tell probably requires a good amount of water and there's also common milked which would require a lot less but they're good in full sun and the watering schedule would be I think maybe once or twice every couple days or a week yeah and we would get the water there through a little like signup system and we would just have people bring the water to the site with like buckets yeah Bucket Brigade yeah I mean milkweeds generally I mean they're sort of a a semi Wetland plant I mean they like water and we usually do well but if it's a we have a dry spell that's when you have to worry withed in in a not when it's right not right next to a a stream or or Wetland but you guys know that you've done your research it's good any other points about this um sounds good now what was the area oh okay can I just um when you come to the town because that's their next step um one of the main questions will be management not only water but breing um you know they already went out I think fall and they they they were amazing readers um but spring is going to be you know summer so do you have any plans for the management like weeding how often would we have to we like not that if you keep up with it it's okay yeah so I think for that we could use school clubes yeah because they've already offered to help with maintaining it and I think by that they understood weeding could be a part of it and I guess us personally we could help we too yeah mean did you order the kosk because the Kos like the think the frame not yet but that's so they're going to do a new kind of and we're gonna get new like glass over it yeah it'll be the same original like building of the kiosk but we hope to make it look a little bit newer not really by taking it down but just by updating the glass and making it less scratched or broken and updating the like information yeah yeah I I forgot to ask um right next adjacent to that where that board is the kiosk is right yeah yeah it's right in front of it right in front of it and what do you have a rough idea of the area I think it was a 10 by 10 a little bit more than a 10 by 10 a little bit more than 10 by 10 okay okay that's that helps to I should thought about that all right well it sounds good I mean I think from the environmental commission's point of view we totally are in favor of this project it sounds really great and next step is to bring it to the township committee as you know so we wish you luck thank you for your presentation and thank you for your slides thank you all right okay so we're now going to switch to a different U you need you need this one right okay we're gon we're very lucky to have Susan Bristol here from The Watershed Institute who is going to uh give us a presentation about ms4s uh and how environmental Commissioners can engage with storm water which is appropo of what Gabe was mentioning earlier and so I think your laptops up here do you need to start at the um are you ready I think we're ready what happens no people are allowed to be at the DI well we can we can start the program and then I I have one with me should you have to suffer see technology we used to meet around a table upstairs we didn't do this I'm aging myself yes all right so we'll close that and it will be the PowerPoint cranberry get the second second one there yeah great over here for now [Music] we do need to we need to get something to the middle that I'm going to talk to the powers that being about that so then you can just put it on presentation presentation mode okay yeah am I allowed to sit here yes in fact that's the designated place I I know it's barely enough for here okay good and when you want yes speak good let me just turn my version on here okay good well uh thank you so much for letting me join your meeting um this presentation um has been created for you and has some cranberry specific items in it but also has information that I've shared with quite a few other municipalities um is our 75th Anniversary because the organization was founded in 1949 sure and my job there is the municipal policy specialist and I'm always available to you need more information that I can provide or you have questions um please stay in touch um I am um I come to this work as a licensed architect and planner I'm a former councilwoman and a planning board chair in the village of Rocky Hill which is a small municipality Downstream from you all on milstone so this is um I'm merging all of my uh back background and experience in doing this position doing this job so oh you flip it I'm hitting the button forgetting so if you want to switch Yeah so for those of you whoops so for those of you um who don't know much about the Watershed Institute uh we have a simple Mission which is to keep water safe clean and healthy and we do that through our work um with four uh teams we have a conservation team an advocacy team which I am a part of a science team and an and an education um team we are located just north of uh Pennington on almost 1,000 preserved acres and if you haven't been to our preserve there's a map of it there on the right and if you do come by uh let me know and I'll give you a little tour and I'll I'll greet you but is worth a trip and our Center is a lead Platinum about 10 years ago we built the the primary part of it and we added on to an existing facility so um what we do uh can you switch sorry what we do requires that um we think and act at multiple scales my colleague Mike pizor our policy director does a lot of work at the state level and with the D um he brings state level uh work and information and insight into the municipalities and the counties and we also take what we learn from you all and we bring it up so it's um a multiple scale operation and one if you can switch um one of the reasons that we Advocate multiple scales is because watersheds and subwatersheds occur at different scales and they are nested as you can see in that little image of the Russian dolls that's essentially how they work and so a watershed is actually not just the water itself it's it's defined as an area of land that drains or sheds into a body of water water such as a stream River Pond or lake now one of the challenges in creating Watershed policy is that this kind of a natural system does not respect political boundaries and so Watershed thinking and planning is not neatly limited by our existing entities such as counties and towns can you flip the slide again so to get a sense of the scale of our Watershed um the state is divided up into watershed management areas and the map on the left um is a state D map we are located in area 10 which is the millstone River and um the red circle on the right is is the approximate place where we are in Cranberry you can see Devil's Brook cranberry Brook it it drains in and eventually becomes a part of the U Millstone this is the Upper Millstone then like Carnegie and Princeton you know changes um the watershed definition a little bit and Montgomery Rocky Hill Hillsboro Manville are all considered the lower it's north of here but it's Downstream because the river flows north so the next slide so just to review quickly the kind of regulatory background of how we got to where we are the Clean Water Act from 1972 um established this man um to to clean up our waterways um you can see on the on the bottom left there uh there was an Infamous River on fire uh which actually um really got a lot of people activated and um it was quite a horrific scene um but as you can see the municipal the ms4 program was established by the federal PA Clean Water Act but it's implemented by the states and so that's why your Town's permit comes from the state of New Jersey DP but it is a permit issued to municipalities not to individuals or Property Owners if you want to swi switch thank you oh you have to do this in sequence this one rolls out fancy like keep yeah keep going each time okay so the ms4 stands for municipal separate storm sewer system it is a conveyance or system of conveyances that is by a city town or other public entity that discharges to us Waters it is designed to collect or convey it includes storm drains pipes and open ditches it is not a combined sewer and it is not part of a sewage treatment plant and this one picture on the right is in my neighborhood that's a pretty awful um situation there in Rocky Hill um and the permit regulates the discharges um from these systems which the municipalities own and control okay next one yeah just a clarification I'm not sure I appreciate the last two bullet points there where you mean this is not a combined sewer what what do you mean by so so Newark New Jersey and maybe Trenton and older cities have their they don't have it anymore but nework I think still does yeah so they have their sewage and their storm water combined so this permit doesn't deal with sewage or sewer treatment right uh the sewer treatment plants that we have do have um tmdls you know like a limited discharge you know that they're allowed to um put into the waterways but that's a whole different thing and what did you have another question or not is that it okay so um the ms4 permit the new one started last January kicked in January of 23 um for New Jersey um one of the biggest differences was that we used to have a tier a and tier B in that permit and small towns like hopal bur Rocky Hill and rural community ities like West Amal for instance they were exempt from the ms4 permit now uh our waters are impaired enough and the population has grown enough that the whole state now is included so then in July um the DP um activated the and you know published the Inland flood protection rules and um those those are about storm water quantity so the ms4 is primarily about water quality so last year we had a new quality and a new quantity standard what was really unique about the Inland flood protection I think even in the nation is that it's the first uh set of regulations for storm water that is based on actual like recent and current data as well as projected data what is coming climate climate change Trends so that was very important uh you can see the map on the left about the increased um The increased downpours the uh precipitation you know the frequency the quantity and on the right if you're a lifelong New Jersey resident as I am or a multi-generational New Jersey resident you know this you can see this developed land um increase right most densely right across the middle of the state where we are you know the belt and this only goes to 2010 this map so this isn't even current uh next slide please so um this is a map that we made at the Watershed of Manville so um you all are about maybe 25 miles or so above Manville I mean by geography but Manville um is where the millstone River all of the millstone River Watershed converges with the Raritan River and that red circle is Convergence point but what this map shows is um the former um flood Plains and flood areas in the yellow but since the Inland flood rule kicked in the red is the expansion of the flood zone the flood Hazard zone so you can see the impact of that on one little town almost creating an island you know in the middle and another thing on this map is um blue buyouts and you can see along the river in the beige Zone the aqua green and the pink those are various um properties that have been bought out because of repeated flooding in in what's called The Lost Valley and um so Manville mayor's been at the Forefront of really advocating for for us to do more um about flooding so then the next role that was supposedly circulating right now the Watershed is circulating a petition that I can email to you and share with you to encourage the governor to actually release the um the next oh did you sorry can you flip yeah um the next rule is part of NJ pact which is the um the protect ction against climate change um e effort and then the real re it's another acronym it stands for resilient environments and Landscapes and so this is going to be really important because there's currently a a loophole for redevelopment which those of you on planning boards might know about um but these rules will um require Redevelopment to actually you know repay or remove some of the damage from the past promote the retention of storm water on the site itself instead of letting it fly off into other properties it will require um major developments uh all major developments to meet the rules and there are nature-based solutions and an increase in those and on the left one of my students at NJIT um did this rendering but this this is an example of up in the paic River Basin where I'm from of a site that flooded three times in five years closed all the stores created unemployment and a lot of material damage it was a 10 acre 100% impervious cover strip mall classic strip mall and it's a flood plane so it probably shouldn't have anything at all but there are ways of looking at um Redevelopment where you actually can repair and remove a lot of um the things that cause the problems if you if you can switch um this is a little diagram now switching from the regulatory realm more into um you know the role you all play and can play in all of this so um this is a really you all are a really important team because you you have all these connections between the electeds the professionals and the citizens the residents of your community um you are the residents of your community and volunteers and you also connect to the planning board so um one of the things that you all can do is encourage your electeds to actually adopt you know enhanced ordinances and um educate the community uh next slide this might be uh redundant for some of you but the water cycle diagram on the left is a kind of generic you know pattern of how water moves through the environment but humans have been changing it and you can see on the left a green field um and on the right a generic you know Urban Development and you can see um how the runoff can easily go from 10% on a Green Field to 55% you know on a on an urban um the one that we don't see or witness is the infiltration uh the recharge so on a Green Field you might get um 25% deep infiltration but in an urban site maybe only five so groundwater recharge is something that is considered you know in our in our regulations on the bottom um you know the impacts of overdevelopment our stream scour on the left that's the beaten Brook um in Montgomery on the right flooded Manvel so if you can flip the slide so I've sort of made a case for um you know recognizing that impervious cover is a problem and uh when you combine impervious cover which is creating a lot of like quantity running off of sites with quality concerns you can see how pollution on Paving often just goes Direct ly into a storm Basin without any filtration or absorption or vegetative you know intermediary so one of the things that we promote and a lot of the regs promote is to try to isolate the storm water before it goes into the system and filter it you can see on the top that's the millstone River you can see all of the kind of typical impairments that are found in the waterways in New Jersey and on the bottom right I actually saw that in Rocky Hill the millstone in Rocky Hill when we had the drought like a year ago August the harmful algo Bloom which is usually found in static water like ponds but it was actually in the river it's pretty bad um next slide so here are two little little charts uh the one on the left um is a really kind of simple diagram but it shows how once a certain amount of land has more than 10% of impervious cover it starts to be impacted in terms of water quality and over 25% it's non-supporting and the most recent integrated water quality assessment report from New Jersey D is on the right they do those about every two years I think and you can see in all the categories the gold bar is nonsupporting and the gold bar is the majority of each of those categories whether it's Aquatic Life or Recreation or uh water supply so these are all publicly available this is um so these diagrams are connecting land use impervious cover and and flooding trying to kind of connect the dots a little bit these are from the watersheds um 2020 impervious cover assessments that we did for most of our communities and on the left is um is the map of of your town with the red highlighted Urban type development and believe it or not grass Lawns Suburban Lawns are considered Urban Development because of the runoff and the impacts um and then on the right it's just a pie chart version of the same thing so cranberry covers 13.5 square miles 33% of the land is urban um approximately 14% And this is back in 2020 14% is impervious surface cover so if you went back to that chart you'd be you know into the range of impacting the water quality but not in a um not in the extreme um scenario if you can flip the slide uh this is also from our report uh this is your Weds you've got five subwater sheds which are sometimes called Huck 14s it's just a designation technical designation for them and um they create these very nice horizontal bands which suggests that the waterways are moving you know from east to west and um your bottom Southern border is U the millstone coming through so if you can uh change the slide um I threw this together um because in most towns the direction of the water flow is something that people don't really understand it's pretty easy for cranberry um so you've got coming in from adjacent towns you know you've got the Cedar Brook and the cranberry Brook and um and then you've got a little bit of the shallow and Devil's Brook of in the corner and then the millstone and what I circled there are a couple of Confluence points which are like flash points typically for flooding and the small one is there where the cranberry Brook and Cedar Brook merge and then the bigger one is outside of your border but not far away and you've got a lot of convergence going on there in West Windsor right before uh Lake Carnegie if you could flip um so Watershed planning um oh something dropped up there okay well the subtitle for this is supposed to read Regional scale opportunities and the Watershed Institute is really advocating for Watershed um towns to work with each other and this is tied to the fact that the ms4 permit is going to require an improvement plan um we've already um we've already gathered uh as pink towns and all the towns where the outfall is Trenton and the Delaware we have a working group already with the Stony Brook towns and I'm putting together a lower Millstone group for Somerset County to get those towns together so um these these are some of the tools that are already available for regional work one is the Watershed Improvement plan if you Canam up with any neighboring municipalities it should save you time and money quite frankly if you share you know similar watersheds um storm water utilities which do not exist yet in New Jersey are allowed by law and there are a few towns like Hoboken and Princeton and others that are very actively like in in the final stages of reviewing the feasibility of that uh the state plan is being updated and is being released and the state plan um has two added goals which include um equity and environment added to all the previous goals that the state plan had um dealt with and um finally um Advocates and nonprofits are doing Watershed plans and like the musket Kong Watershed for instance is currently doing one with a grant for their area uh next slide please so back to the ms4 if you already had the ms4 per permit previously then the two new things in the list of ordinances are salt storage and tree replacement and I I'm sure I don't have to remind you how important trees are as storm water management um tools not to mention all the other benefits um so U your storm water web page uh you can turn the slide your uh web page has links to your ordinance which is great and links to D sites now this this storm waterer management page is a new requirement for towns that didn't have ms4 previously but it's an opportunity for you to track your community activities which can help the town with their ms4 permit so when you do Outreach or or various um activities in the community you might want to think about um putting them on that storm water page if they're related to storm water improvements um these are the um categories in the permit for outreach so you've got your public schools Regional collaborations and things like cleanups up there's the photo of The Medallion going on the um catch Basin you can click again I think there might be one or two more pictures that pop up bios swells signage you know when you're installing something to have some signage for the community you know rules about you know or pamphlets information about washing cars and avoiding the pollutants that run into the drain uh next next one um so the Watershed Improvement plan again we encourage a regional um a regional option has three phases you're currently with the mapping of your drains you're doing your inventory report there's an assessment report to identify some projects and then there's the final plan this illustration is from the watershed's impervious cover assessment and it highlights a series of sites that we actually already did conceptual designs for so you know it would make sense to look at those and and remember that that you're not necessarily starting from scratch if any of these projects that are already in the report um might be relevant to the the permit requirements and the objectives include reducing tmdls improving water quality and also um reducing storm water flooding so if you can flip the slide and because tmdl is another acronym um this is a slide to define it and um it's like a a pollution budget you know it it identifies the pollutant already known in your waterways and creates like a limit but the idea here is to improve those the situation and reduce those pollutants so uh phase one of the Watershed Improvement plan um is as we said mapping and I found this on your website these are your out walls where your storm water systems actually do um send the water into the streams and waterways so this is already on your website I was curious if the high school kids that you mentioned are they using the tools from d on the cell phone and yeah the ar ar just but it's the mobile right so Rocky Hill just did that with volunteers um month or so ago I wor with perfect so this is great because I organized a training for that at the Watershed and we don't we're not tracking how many towns are doing that uh Princeton also during covid had University students um using different tools like even street view on Google and now they're validating yeah yeah it's fun actually I mean the training was fun so that's one ful to hear it's very exciting next slide um so this this is an example the next phase is the Watershed assessment report and this is one example from the watersheds ovious cover study showing your Elementary School and the sort of conceptual locations for rain Gardens bios selles documenting the drainage area but it's full of full of examples so in this phase two uh your town will have to identify some potential projects and maybe estimate the funding for those if you do a regional plan the project might not even be in your town but you can contribute to it so because it's about the waterways and the watersheds it might be more economical instead of everybody repeating like doing projects instead of the projects that have the most impact uh the next whoops the next slide right um finally the Watershed Improvement report this was due year five which means it's due and probably just shy of four years but one of the um bullet points requirements that I highlighted there are problems identified outside of the jurisdiction so you know this permit really requires towns and communities to know what's being dumped or what's being sent into your waterways and what are you sending out and so it's really important in a home rule state where people try to limit their thinking and power into their little you know feom if that's the right word uh this is a a broader um issue and and way of thinking next one yeah so um The Watershed Institute Mike pizo my colleague um posted on our site and has circulated you've probably seen it but you all have some enhancements in your storm water ordinances from the last round but we did one at the end of 23 it's on our website these are the reasons why we did an enhanced ordinance because of the things that I've already mentioned um small developments are not addressed in the regulations the redevelopments have a loophole which is a disaster considering that land is shrinking not expanding in the state and um the current rules do not address actually the volume they talk about the rate they don't really talk about the volume so if you flip to the next um this is what our web page looks like and these are some of the key components of the enhanced ordinance um the reason that we did this the timing of this is that the um Inland flood protection rule required an updated storm water ordinance before July of this year there was a one year period so I don't know where your town is right now whether you've updated it I believe so yeah so feel free to um if you're interested in in how these things can be relevant to your town then you'll set up a meeting you know with Mike my colleague and I could could meet with you the electeds you know and just um address it very specifically for your your needs and interests just go back to that yeah and barber C here uh we have to adopt the new storm water rig which we did and then we also did a resolution to uh I guess just to clear something up that might have been in conflict that came through a couple months ago I remember them reading it at the planning board and like yeah it's great let's do it so I think that came forth to the town but what we're talking about now is a new enhanced this is this is we had previously adopted an enhanced storm water so this get this is um an enhancement of what the Inland flood rule requires okay and the reason that we put this out in 2023 is because towns theoretically had a year to consider enhancements but most towns are wrapping their heads around well I all the new minimal requirements great point with the Redevelopment yeah cr's really moved into the next stage of its development we're no longer really developing Green Field sites we are redeveloping existing light industrial sites or commercial buildings that uh were built uh 40 years ago into light industrial or pharmaceutical type sites so when they come in if uh they love these vast paved Parcels because they can get their storm water reductions simply by removing some impervious and they don't have to do anything else because they they come below the thresholds for reductions and that's how redevelopments uh really get around it's horrendous so they don't have to rebuild their terrible uh basins they don't have to do uh they don't have to do much to clean uh as far as storm water goes and it's uh it's definitely something that you know from that that point of view from an EC point of view we'd be very excited that uh you know that the new Redevelopment standard does come out because it was supposed to come out with the new Inland rules right originally that was the hope carved it back out so they could shove that other one out but I will say that you can have a Redevelopment you can have a municipal Redevelopment ordinance and we can supply you with some examples and Montgomery Township had an enhancement where they do require um total suspended solids and certain you know treatment from Redevelopment sites so I see sometimes bits and pieces of that but if if that's something that you is facing you're facing for your future this would be a good thing to take a look at that's important and we have lots of parks uh commercial parks with shared storm water facilities and I run into this in my day job too where they're just developing a or redeveloping a portion of the site but they all share a basin or a pond and how do you revisit or Force seven um plots who share a pond to uh to make enhancements to that uh to that Basin or Pond or retention know because ideally you know the old thought was hold on to it and then let it go and now it's let's try to get it to recharge on site as much as possible and then let a little bit go and it's uh it's difficult just because it's very complex when when we're talking about large developments you on that I'd love to see it as well yeah yeah and so like I just looked at a development application for self storage unit not quite as big as a warehouse a monster warehouse but it was most of it storm water you know they took away a little Paving right they didn't have to do a thing it's all going directly into a 1969 storm water system on the adjacent mall like strip mall so none of it is adequate I mean what what's on the site and then what it's connecting to so it's a it's just a series of bad there's a lot of catch up in the Redevelopment um yeah we're running out of new places to develop so it when people do Green Field development they have beautiful storm water bio swells basins biob basins um it's it's unre recognizable compared to what you know growing up in the 80s what I remember you know they fence around and kids would go down there and play the grass and Basin and it looks nothing like that now it's uh it's a completely different cre where I learned to swim in North Jersey as a kid is essentially a storm water facility it's like maybe there was a stream but it got damned and I don't even want to think about it the local Su Pond yeah but uh I just want to I mean before we go too much further I uh the Watershed uh almost like alliances with towns up and down stream um I know that Princeton is working uh very hard on that with its neighboring uh with the neighboring municipalities and that's sort of one of those you know is it me or is it them who's creating the problem type thing because how do you get all I mean I love the idea of towns working together in in uh in Watershed it's just you know and Barbara and I a discussion about the storm water utility how do you get people Beyond borders home Ru to coordinate their efforts to do this and I'd love to see it happen I'll tell you how it's currently rolling out right now I mean it's not all buttoned up right but it's kind of like there's a there's a county planner involved and it's kind of like a shared service but what the Watershed did was we got a proposal from a group called one water for the whole Stony Brook Watershed okay and then the idea is that the towns based on their impervious cover or geography pay a little bit for that study but then they can use all of that information okay right in their report so that's an just a simplistic summary of like how it seems to towns What towns well it would be it's Hopewell Township it's Pennington it's um Princeton it's I guess is West Windsor a little well they're not in that group because they're kind of on the other side of the canal um no no it's everything like hope lawrenville it's kind of contain so and West dwell just said they want to join in and they only have a little piece of I mean they're they're not signing on like writing the checks but they want to come to the meetings and figure out how they can be a part of it which is really exciting because they're a rural community right you know with small piece of the water for now right everything yeah so we're happy to in fact we could set up a meeting with my colleague Mike and he can explain how it'sing would pull that off here yeah yeah I mean we can take a look and see if there's any opportunity right I mean I'd imagine we'd be looking cranberry Monroe um if we're going upstream and then that stretches out Mammoth County which is whole another hurdle you got Millstone and Al all all on the millstone Watershed right I spoke at in Monroe um and that's kind of the fringes of the Watershed they have two watershed management areas you know right the town is split in half right the riton and the millstone and they they were very receptive to the information they weren't asked to join a group or anything but they they really really were receptive and they have a lot of flooding problems the councilman who attended that talk said that when they flood they have like four Islands the town is divided up into four pieces like they can't even get from one to the other and they have some of those senior retirement communities like Concordia I think and so I mean they're paying attention yeah Bara has a her hand up so I'm sorry my back is turned study and um that study got picked up by Federal grant for a million dollars and I keep asking the count when coming about what are we doing and um I think it's going through the chain of what needs to be done and so there is the sou County flood mitigation plan part of it was each town had to update the um EPA flood like like we we have new stuff now so I put on their Maps now Place flooding that work on okay on their flood maps so they're G to look into all that but we do have this Southern M and Monroe was part of it and you know James okay yeah where that stands I keep asking you know it's but it's the interconnection it's like but we say Okay Southern middle sex but the water goes beyond there you know and it keeps moving it starts right as you can say to look at how it is impacting at least eight or nine towns within this Southern of course Etc you know but um you know it's happen it's a big Venture and you know it's it's going to come in pieces and eventually it'll become but they are looking at Beyond borders right this study is beyond borders great just where it is asking right okay all right next slide I'm almost done oh you're almost done you've been very patient um but it's nice to chat as the slides roll out it's helpful so the Watershed science team I we rely on citizen science and we have volunteer opportunities for anyone in your community who wants to actually do regular testing of the streams near their homes or anywhere um where we need test we have a salt water project that we manage for the state of New Jersey which was testing waterways you know after Road salts in the wintertime we have a bacterial action team and River friendly program so um if any of your residents really want to do something tangible uh that gets mapped and available as public data and actually upheld in court citizen science was recently upheld in court for data which was unheard of before but as long as they're trained and a group like the Watershed is managing it like this is really important stuff so next one and then we have a streamwatch program and you can see there um this is cranberry now the the little dots that show um stream watch sites there aren't that many here on this map so I don't know if you have any uh volunteers that are involved in this program but um one thing I wanted to point out is that coming up I don't know if you're Municipal planner engineer or any of you all with some technical background are interested but we are offering a watershed restoration Academy in May do you know about it yeah so and we're doing it with Princeton Hydro they're really really good in in restoration projects so I threw that image on the stream watch page because you know I run into EC members and community members with some background that makes them want to know how to assess the streams in their Community I mean right behind me and Rocky Hill we have like horrible stream erosion and um you know I'm probably going to take this course and take it back to my Council and say all right let's get the grant let's let's do this um next one and we have the river friendly program that includes schools I don't think your school is listed um but but this is a wonderful thing for the school uh in your community we have a young man named Davis who's working with the river friendly schools I think Montgomery High School is um having a ceremony soon like this week to reveal the plaque because they get a you know they get like a certification So speaking of certifications if the school is interested that's a wonderful program for River friendly um and then the next is the salt watch and you can see the data gets uploaded regularly and um again I don't think there are very many sites in Cranberry I see there's an elevated site near rossore there's a large um moderate amount of salt you know down below Princeton Meadows but this just is an example of the web page and and the area around your um municipality next slide and these are some resources um Mike pizor my colleague just published in the league of municipalities um news magazine up there navigating the challenges for flooding and pollution in central New Jersey so I recommend that we have our conference in February and we regularly have webinars um that are open to all on Fridays and then this is more from our website and more of the mapping where you can look up not only the streamwatch sites but the we map the Alo bloom so when people If You observe them you can report them and they can be mapped and that's very helpful to the D and finally my last slide um oh that's a weird that's oh it just that's weird cut off the learn yeah lost some learn lost a lot of stuff from that page anyway this is the view from our um our um man manufactured Wetlands if that's the right word or man-made wetlands in the back constructed there you go Water Water Resource grouple construct yeah so I just want to thank you very much and happy to answer any questions if I can thank you very much and I I want to start I mean can I um retain this presentation and share it with the Commissioners or what what how can I you know what because there's so much here I want to say actually I'd rather you take the pdf version a small file and easily emailed if we can before I go I'll give it to you okay um from the jump that that's the one that's distributable that' be great yeah um any other thoughts there a lot to to digest I know for myself um I had heard about these state regulations coming down the pike I don't know how you know it's hard to know when that's going to happen uh in terms of the recharge on-site rules but can I email you the petition link and you can circulated and it's to encourage the governor to get it to the through publishing is it out to public comment did oh that's been well wait I don't know usually the final yeah so it has to be published yeah but it may have already been through that because we've been waiting a long to mention it sounds like it already happened or I think we're waiting for it to be um activated at this point so maybe they'll just dumping on us in July like they did last year Well we were pushing for Earth date which is soon days that would be a surprise um are there any um Reflections right now on this is is a lot to uh assimilate but I think we should think about it going forward and and we'll have to like develop our strategy because there's many things to approach here so um I had a quick question yes um since I'm gonna be out there sort of like on the front lines trying to get into people's faces and teach them all this Wildlife gardening stuff how can like the everyday citizen like what are things that they can do on their properties or you know that and from coming from that perspective like know personally I live on like the Upper Millstone it's like right next to it and I have I think two inlets in front of me I have like the a preserved Farmland that the standing water just goes like it's like a little baby River going right to that storm drain so I'm thinking like oh how can I contribute how could each cranberry resident sort of contribute is are you familiar r g Ruckers extension service do you know Chris abrupta Dr abrupta runs these green infrastructure courses okay and anyone can take them um I I signed up and maybe I took five out of the eight sessions but it's it's very user friendly and they actually if you go through his course they have grants and they'll come and do a rain Garden you can apply to have them come and help you do one you know maybe on your public property but homeowners can do it too that's awesome so I can send the link to that program the resources that they also offer that would be great I know I had copied Gabe actually I think we were all kind of thinking about the same thing before you showed up but um I think it was actually the Girl Scouts we were thinking about like how do we get water to them and I think Dr Rogers mentioned having like rain barrels like collect water um does you know if the Watershed does any education around that and there like I saw a photo of like folks creating rain barrels and ECS and other town do those workshops but oh right Monroe is having one I think Ruckers wrote us back that like they don't have that training anymore they were heavy into rain barrels about 15 years ago major push and is it not likeor kind of changed his philosophy a little bit on that um I know him very well um and so my sense of it in barar but um that they really want to promote more of the infiltration um constructed Wetland approach is really what they've been doing and installing I mean he has an army of people a small army of people who go in in the season and go around to municipalities on public land and and install these things and and restore do restoration but he I mean the rain barrel thing is good I mean I have rain barrels it's it's nice to collect a little bit extra water in the dry months but you know it's um just thinking for the monar yeah for the butterflies but as like also off of the school or something maybe like if there's more impactful things that we can do like planting a tree or rain Garden I think that's sort of what we're getting I also send the link to this impervious cover report done for cranberry that has all of these sample projects yeah oh yeah I I love that slide where we saw the school because I know there's going to be a lot of new construction at the school and opportunities to wiggle projects in there going about yes I I feel like I want to talk about both at the same time when I'm out there so I'm gonna go sign up when I get home and we have a rain Gard we were one of the first ones to get a rain Garden for rers to do it we we have it in our in our Village Park and we have a sign that explains everything put that on your water website projects and things on your website so there's a I mean so there's a record of what you've already done it might be listed but it's probably not one more thing your environmental commission web page I don't think does not have a link to the storm water web page so you might think about that our web page is probably totally more abun at this it needs needs to be looked at it hasn't been reviewed in a while well but you know four requires one now so everyone is scrambling to either update them or but you know that would be a nice link between you all and this the official storm water page thing I forgot to mention that the next of committee meeting should be having the tree removal tree removal repl first first reading and that's um sort of added you already had a robust tree ordinance right oh you didn't oh so this is new for you yeah oh okay sorry but that's good for bbo transportation and I any other comments on the ms4 something is going off are we creating Steam and smoke okay all right John you'll share that presentation I will I'll get you tonight as soon as right afterwards and I think we're there interested in those continuing education credits that I saw up there I could use 12 oh you could use 12 you're looking for 12 I am oh awes all right so um with that I would entertain a movement to adjourn John I have but one more thing oh you made it sound like you were ready to go so if you have something else nothing else okay uh is everybody everybody knows where the pool Club was um and the parking lot is currently uh full of uh soil are you know what's going on there you you say okay there's uh unstabilized mounds of dirt sitting in the pool Club bar okay and that's in the uh that's in the flood way it said it's in our flood way okay so it's being uh taken care I just wanted to bring that up to see if it was okay that is all [Music] good okay all right do we have a motion to adjourn I'll motion I'll second all in favor say I I the eyes have it see you next time really nailed [Music] it and get rid of this one get rid of this PDF I mean this PowerPoint all right oh yeah dumping man I think it was