okay we're GNA call the we're g to call the May 20th meeting of the environmental commission to order pursuant to the open public meetings act note of this meeting was sent to the cranbery 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 all right we'll do uh roll call John reinfelder here Josh goood here and John cring is excused Gabe leaderman here Becky Ms is excused Jason milenberg here Teresa vicaro here Dela George is not here Steven hster here okay and Barbara rers out okay we are not going to have a Township committee report uh oh we have to do the minutes yes I always forget that we have to do the minutes and I did revise the minutes hopefully you notice that a little bit or I tried to summarize the reporting from The Watershed Institute there was a lot there but it really was focused on the NJ Pack reel legislation that is before the state and how that would affect municipalities and how municipalities May um want to modify their local rules in response to that but that was the major thing that I modified I just bring that to your attention everybody has a revised everyone has a revised one yes sorry so are there any give you a second take a look at that all right I guess I don't see any modifications we can uh vote on the minutes all those in favor I I I oppos exensions all right so now reports and um and Barbara Rogers is away but do we have a report from Parks and Recreation if so you may approach the table hi everyone Brendan Hansen um we had our first meeting of the new Parks and Recreation Commission last Wednesday um at 7 that's going to be our new time going forward uh where essentially a fusion of the old Parks Commission and the old Board of recreation Commissioners with some members from each body um I was elected the chair of the commission and Katie Harman was elected vice chair we are looking to continue to do what Parks Commission had done which is to send somebody to attend these EC meetings to Lea's um with you for in particular with regard to um the recreation features and The Preserves which is mostly just um the walking paths in The Preserves um and to and with respect to um the cranberry Brook preserve that sort of open space area Once you walk in um but we're looking to do that uh we would appreciate if you could have us um put on your agenda if you or consider putting us on your agenda under the report section going forward um we may not always attend uh somebody may not always attend particularly if we have no questions to ask or updates to give but we will make an effort to even when we if somebody doesn't attend to um either uh observe remotely or observe after the fact um or touch base um I think it's and all the other members seem to agree that it's good to have some Synergy going between the two bodies um I've got nothing new for today other than that um any questions well congratulations thank you I'm being the chair and thank you for coming I think it'd be great to work together with with your group as well all right is that the I guess the second or third Wednesday of the month would be the regular it is the third Wednesday of the month is is the regular time so some because sometimes you'll be we'll be meeting in the same week depending on how the calendar Falls sometimes uh EC will be meeting the week after uh parks and rank sometimes they'll be meeting two days before parks and rank depending on which day of the week is the first day of the month go and membership you guys have a full yes we have a full nine members uh we have five members who uh formerly served on the Parks Commission myself Adam Canam Christina fatigas Sally ogrady and Kelly lavy is that was that four or five did I and then me um and we have four members from the old uh Board of recreation Commissioners we have uh deepo whose last name I don't remember uh we have Omar M Udin we have Katie Harmon and we have Fallon whose name last name I can't say it's got got a C and A Z and a second C it's confusing to me it's like Cur or something I don't know okay um and uh I think the two alternates are valent and Christina and the others are the regular members wonderful I think that's good any other feedback for Brandon very good uh awesome thanks for coming thank you we there was no development review committee meeting uh because there were no new development applications so we did not meet um there apparently was a a meeting of the planning board say a word there was a uh meeting of the planning board they didn't have quum so um so since the president uh the applicant was there to present they presented and uh we're reviewing at home and we'll vote at the next meeting okay very good um on the old business uh a lot of these things sort of just carried over um we had the stream clean up on April 20th it went it was very successful despite our rainy day uh we had a good turnout actually and even some folks from Amazon came and participated in the cleanup that was nice and uh we did very well uh most of the people stayed in village Park but some of a large group went behind the firehouse on the cranberry Brook and then myself and two others went to the millstone River at the Pino preserve and got a lot of stuff there as you might imagine um and Paul um went and and his wife went to the millstone River on 130 behind the 7-Eleven there and they got a lot of stuff but could not actually collect all the stuff that was there there's a lot of stuff there um and that's something that we're looking at uh okay so that was that preserve can I ask a question um walking around the pin OES there does tend to be some trash that accumulates there's no place to throw it out is is it I know it's added resources to stick a garbage can there and to have DPW pick it up but there's just there's no place close by to throw things out that is true and I it's actually true of all the preserves in in them they don't have any Trash receptacles I guess I'm trying to think there is something by the soccer fields which is close to Cranberry Brook for right nothing at Reinhardt nothing at Reinhardt nothing at unami nothing at unami so sounds like something that the parks and W and EC can partner on we could maybe potentially partner on that yes yeah the thing about but it is the Buy in with I mean the town to go there and get materials is another thing yeah the thing about pins is that I think we probably get fishermen who sit there you get that you also get visitors um in the darker hours of the night perhaps enjoying a Pepsi um or other beverage might just throw out the and and and the can doesn't make it so that is something because there's no place to put I mean that one in particular that one that one in particular is prone to trash because people hang there right because other like unami they walk yeah reinh you kind of walk you for a little bit but you're not hanging out so that would be something to think about so I get that would be something we'd have to bring to higher Powers but I think is worth discussing um I can bring I'll bring that up with um with Barbara to start and we can see how that goes okay uh preserve management Trail maintenance I didn't have anything specific on that although I hearing Brendan me mention that I just say that we used to have this idea of us you know episodically walking the trails and clearing small sticks and then coming back and telling the town if there's a big tree across the trail and that's sort of been our procedure but maybe I don't know if you had any ideas about that we can discuss that uh at a future time but that's sort of been our our MMO on that um okay I don't think there's anything else really on trail maintenance right now do we have an update on the mapping um Barbara and I met with four high schoolers on Sunday yesterday Yer yesterday oh my goodness um yeah and we were out about hour and a half two hours and we mapped maybe 15 um in Four Seasons well we've got like over 600 more to do I think part of the problem is translating the list of let the DPW list um the names and which ones they're referring to we have run across a few extra inlets so not on the list not on the list oh so we've been mapping them and and I'm reaching out to Tom to figure out what exactly to do with them um I think the thing that takes the most time is there isn't really good service so it's it's easy to submit a pin and put a pin in the map with basic information but to upload the picture that always takes a couple minutes so we're but this time we actually in the Four Seasons we've had to put a new label um that you know all trash goes directly to water so um that also took a little bit of time so you have those labels and you've been fixing them yes oh great yes okay so it was quite productive sort of just the small number so but the high school students are still very interested in helping out and maybe not over the summer but uh next year too and we have we have time to do this so when you say 600 left um is that out of a total of 800 or what's the scale of this I want to say it was like 650 okay that's on our list and we maybe done 30 maybe done 30 okay so this is this is a longterm yeah I think once I think once we get into the flow of it we've been picking smaller sections where the labeling isn't quite as the the problem for me is that they are unique not unique ID so I'm sure DPW knows what they're talking about but I'm just you know we just are triple checking that this is the inlet that they think it is from the list okay so I think once we've been doing a lot of if it's in front of a house they will label it with the house number if it's not attached or you know not near an identifying house then it'll be given a hash as1 two3 and that's one side of the street the other side of the street will also have old Cranberry Road as12 and three so it's not an identifying so there's just a lot of oh they're not unique they're not unique I don't know if they need to be unique it would help our process if they were but sounds like they need to be unique I would think so but if DP we have this thing you know when we go fieldwork must have unique identifiers otherwise you don't know exactly which is it that one or yeah or the other one yeah but I'm I'm kind of going it's very easy to edit the name so we're just doing what we can and trying to match up with the list and then we'll go to Tom and um Tom Decker and and make sure that we're on the same page right but that's what's taking so long yeah no I could see that but it'll get there it's not hard right it just takes time and and then depending on Wi-Fi to upload stuff can you could you upload the pictures later or is that not going to work potentially but you still have to walk and then go go to the library or something and upload everything quickly I don't know I'm just oh that's knowing which one is which which might be difficult if you had yeah you'd have to label the photos as you took them or have a photo log if there was a unique ID do that that's the thing unique ID photo log and the the that's the other thing I do in fieldwork the photo log well and and the Gres in a particular area all look the same yeah so yeah okay so we're learning we're getting a little faster it's great and it's great that the students are and it's getting it's getting it'll get done that's fantastic yeah and everybody's happy to be out there so right it's been good and doing a service for the town and the state I did want in connection to that I did send around excuse me uh those the webinars the D webinars that that Susan had alerted us to and they're all related to the the njp packed real legislation but there's one in particular session four is called storm water that one might be the one that we really need to look at uh which is next Wednesday May 29th at at 10: a um I'm assuming you can look at it asynchronously you don't have to look at it at that that time I'm going to try to tune in and see it if I can but um the other ones sea level rise and inundation that's not really us Coastal climate protection is not really us then the second one which is this week is environmental enhancements and I don't really know what that is so I'll try to learn more about it but certainly storm water would be the one for that topic all right I had a quick thing absolutely I don't know if this is the time to say it but it's kind of sustainable Jersey I was um I got to remember the name I was invited and accepted to serve on the science and watershed management Committee of the Watershed Institute and we had our first meeting my first meeting it wasn't their first meeting um earlier this month and um there's potential sustainable Jersey connections with our students there's they have Decades of data on the watersheds in and around cranberry and there's they're just looking for people to look at it and so it could be like a cool and there are some stations potentially around cranber so I just wanted to update everyone on that I'm going to learn more but there may be as we get student groups that come and are looking for projects or things like that there's potential Partnerships with the Watershed in I didn't know how much data they have but they have a lot of data they have a lot of data over 10 years ago I got a tranch of nitrate dat for for streams around here yeah and it was a lot it was a lot and I I'm sure they've been and they're trying to make it more accessible they've had a lot of data that hasn't been too easy to get at that's but that's the big thing that they're doing now to make it easier for people in the public or working on particular projects with the Watershed Institute so there could be some nice connections to kind of localize some of this for our students um so I'll keep people posted as I learn more that's great and that's wonderful so you'll be on their committee that's great awesome Smiles all around okay that's wonderful they recognize that the ocean is in fact part of the Watershed John wow that's a big step yeah I was happy to hear that you know sometimes sometimes they include Princeton you know no um that's great yeah and how it fits with sustainable Jersey of course you know that a larger yeah well I don't know with the student projects particularly probably more for some of the data they have it might be like a high school it might attract a different population of students right the the one Club they want to get out and get in the environment others may want to work on a computer and analyze some data so it could be a different population of students that want to get involved and yeah potentially we could even talk to the science teachers at the high school um in case because I know they're very responsive to student interests yeah and I think the Watershed Institute is interested in developing some curriculum with the data right so that it'd be easier for the teachers to incorporate into their classes that is so cool yeah yeah okay great all right anything else on sustainable Jersey rip large I just wanted to go back to the idea uploading the pictures later because so yeah you're right they all look the same I I mean I certainly do that every day but um what you could do is bring a dry erase board write your number on it take two pictures one with the erase board in it one without the erase board in it and then when you get home I go ahead and upload those pictures back when we used to do a bridge inspections it was those the photos that killed us I actually take the photo then go to the photo and edit the photo and put text on the photo itself so that when you look at the photo the text is right there on the photo true too good ideas very good ideas thank you all right um the community wildlife habitat certification has news in the form of the proclamation which has been signed sealed and delivered um to quote Motown I guess um anyway I was hoping to hand this over to but anyone's welcome to look at this there's a a copy in your packet um and we're going to file this with our files but may is Garden for wildlife month in Cranberry Township so that's really good and U hopefully we will be promoting that throughout the year of course and then May will be like the big push to get folks to think about their Garden as a wildlife space and what they could do to enhance that you know as as possible okay so we are on to new business moving right along and Gabe uh proposed to talk about the adopt a catch Basin program and so he's going to do that well anyway you can see my notes there it doesn't really matter I guess Gabe if you want you can go up to swap under display settings you should be able to swap whatever anyway but anyway welcome to the adopted catch B program presentation um so uh basically what I want to do is talk a little bit about what the adoped catch basin program is uh some communities that have it here in New Jersey already and um how we can you know kind of Take Charge of the community and help with health and prevent pollution in our waterways um so just a quick basic introduction of to how catch basins and storm inlets work is we get snow melt we get rain we get you know precipitation of any sort it makes its way down the street into storm drains um and down into the sewer system and out to our storm water outfalls around town um when those catch basins get blocked and things get on top of them like leaves which I know where I live my property is full of trees and we have leaves all over the place uh no inlets on my street but we do have leaves all over the place um so like in that top photo there you can see all the debris that sits on top um the leaves they stop you know the garbage from going in as well and that prevents the amount of water that can then leave um that leads to flooding and other things around town um when that garbage does get into the inlet it does make its way out into the waterways and as you guys are out putting your stickers out there that's something that we want to prevent um so that's just kind of a little bit about you know how the catch basins work and why it might be a good idea to implement some of of you know the principles of the adopted catch Basin program um and this is you know a need for Action um you know clean catch basins they mitigate localized flooding I know that there are residents along Main Street that do flood when we do have a lot of rain um not saying this is a direct cause of that obviously but um you know M saying that when there are clear drainage ways that the water does have a place to go um and that would help the overall presence of the community as well um and some of the benefits of the program right there I'll jump right to the two pictures those two pictures are part of Perth Amboy adopted catch facing program um where they actually encourage local artists to come and paint so that they would you know discourage them from doing graffiti um which actually worked out pretty well um you know they they reduced localized flooding um it prevented pollutants from entering the waterways enhance the Aesthetics of the neighborhood um it Fosters Community Pride as well you know when you're out there to be able to take care of what's around um and then it does help with the ms4 permits because it is considered community outreach so we can get storm water points for implementing this which I know do help with maintaining our ms4 permit so there's a little bit of backend to that as well um and going back to something that was brought up earlier in the meeting about putting garbage cans at parks and things like that um you know I mentioned this a little bit later on but I'll mention it now is that this also is a way to kind of help with DPW I mean if if you're a resident and you have a catch Basin out in front of your home you go out you clean the leaves off of it DPW doesn't have to do that exactly so it it frees them up as well so you know there's other things that we can do here um so how it works um pretty simply um this is a map of nework um this is their in map which they have mapped um and using ezri which they have an adopted catch Basin program that's part of ezri that connects with their platform where you can then identify each individual Inlet and tie somebody who has adopted that Inlet and then you have a form as you can see there um that's just a Google form that goes right back to the city of Newark is hey this is who I am this is the catch Basin I want to adopt I'm going to Nick name it whatever um and then it's yours for a year and if you want to renew it after the year you do that again um there are grants that can be provided to towns to provide things like some of the most common things you get like a dozen pair of disposable gloves a dozen garbage bags just like a little kit um you offer I don't know 50 of them on a first come first serve basis um you can get grants for that um so there's a lot of different things that you can do um The Watershed Institute I know that they do have a lot to do with some of these programs they do work with the nature conservancy as well um where they have a lot of information on this as well um and then we'll touch on some other communities and their successes and I'm not going to read from the slide um but I am just going to tell you that here's some communities yes larger more urban communities um but if you look at the bottom of the list our neighbor Princeton is right there um kind of you know know about the flooding that they have experienced in Princeton they're doing everything they can to try and mitigate that with green infrastructure and pump stations and new drainage infrastructure um and this is one of the things that they thought might be a good initiative as well so um we can use some of the literature and some of the you know statutes or whatever you want to call them that were written for some of these towns to say hey this is what we did um this is what can be done this is what can't be done this is you know you're out in a public Street or you know a city street you're a private resident you know Insurance things come into play so I know that there's a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out as well but luckily there are local towns that have done it before us so I don't think that that would be all too difficult to do um by implementing these um all of the cities did have similar successes um it helped to reduce the amount of waste that went into waterways and one of the biggest things um in me coming from the storm water industry that's what I have done for many many years is that one of my greatest successes was when the mayor of Long Beach on Long Beach Island told me that he didn't see kids standing in puddles anymore when they waited for the bus and that really hit home for me because I have kids that stand at the corner that wait for the bus and I don't want to see them standing in puddles either so you know especially in those Urban cities to help reduce ponding at Street corners and things like that I mean how many crossing guards do I pass on the way to you know down Main Street every day um so you know just a lot of the little things that we may not think about um when we're looking at some of these things um and this is it this is my call to action to as to why we should start this program um here's a map of uh cranberry and all of our storm water outfalls as you can see a majority of these drain directly to waterways um or water bodies or um floodways so by reducing the amount of waste that gets to those by implementing this program we can help to mitigate a lot of that debris that we may find during our stream cleanups um so you know we may see that kind of trickle down and go on to where we U we see other things on our agenda that we're doing this may be one of those other things um and then you know improving water quality um aiding DPW Crews like I mentioned and then the ms4 permits um I I I feel like this is something that would benefit the town from you know not only a an environmental aspect but also kind of set us apart to say hey look what cranberries doing to kind of set themselves apart and and do more for the community and do more for the environment um and that is all I got so um I'm more than happy to take questions provide resources for you guys um and go from there yeah thank you that's really a a great program I guess we you know looking forward we would need to think about what it would look like in our town you know in terms of the website and how how the mechanisms for people to sign up so at some point we'll have to think about the dimensions of a a draft proposal proposal I guess on how this would work and we can we can talk about that in other other times um in the case I think so that was the ad that was the Newark website yes yeah and you said did you say South Amboy no Perth Amoy Perth Amboy okay so are they did they get assistance they did they did get gr there there are there are grants that are available to set those programs up yes in the beginning and then what those grant that grant money can be used for like I said you can you know buy the supplies you can set up your infrastructure to you know your your backend stuff to set up the form and stuff like that and they come from State they come from State local and County governments um there are other organizations too as well that do have grants um The Nature Conservancy I believe was one and the other I believe was the New Jersey flood plane Association has granted available for some of this stuff as well I could be mistaken on the second one but I I believe they do okay sounds good any other oh uh thinking about that and even outside of a program if we never got to the point where we did a full adopt your own catch base you probably would pay off at uh cranberry day maybe we work up some literature how can you help go out walk to the front of your property look at your catch Bas and clean up the stuff on top of right you know check out the gutter in front of your house sweep that out you know things like that maybe U that that and then we kind of move forward into the Village area where the catch Basin aren't necessarily spoken for by property owners and then uh without unique identi that's right and and then uh those could be uh those could certainly be adopted out hopefully to businesses who might have an interest like uh adopt the highway m MH you and uh they show their support for the community by taking care of something a couple steps from their door so I I think it's I think it's a great idea I think we could uh certainly work our way towards it with uh some Grassroots type stuff but just a pamphlet or a handout that thank yeah no definitely and and those kind of resources are available so we can you know download them and print them and distribute them and they're kind of town agnostic right right speak you know what I mean so we really don't have to do anything on the back end if you want to get people really motivated have prin in but just kind of black right that's right and they want to do it not better than us no I like I like that having something for cranberry day certainly but no I appreciate the feedback so thank you do you know Gabe do you know if most of the people that participate are private residents or are there businesses that our businesses as well yes and it's more based on I guess just location exactly yeah yep is there a um a way to communicate what the expected labor would be right because people may have totally different ideas of what a catch Basin is and what's right like to be able to communicate clearly but really what we're asking you to do is look at your front yard and see if you can help right like and it's approximately going to take you 10 minutes or whatever each time you see something there right and that's all part of you know that's all written in the literature like you know what what we what we would expect to be done and yeah just like you said sweeping out the gutter and stuff like that but all that information is available and can be disseminated and we do I mean I think the language is not good on this topic um because Gutter People don't aspire to be gutter cleaners gutter CLE generally um but storm water great I mean and we need to think about yes because that's the challenge I think is when people come up to you and you know clean your gutter what my roof gutter what anyway so but that I think is very important because you want to make it understandable right um but not you know a storm waterer Basin sounds big probably to right you know and so we need to make it more it's just two feet it's just five 15t from your front door Inlet something like that storm water inlet we need to Inlet great storm water inlet great something like that anyway we'll have to work on the language that's all I'm saying and and Newark did identify 12 other inlets that they did not know about so it actually helped them when they were mapping yes so I I wanted to mention that because I know you said that there was there was an issue yeah great yeah keeping those thing I mean hurricane HRI we all Remember When was I mean suddenly Main Street became a river and those things just couldn't I mean that was a volume thing there was not it didn't even matter if they were clean or not but yeah still but I think you do I I did notice a couple years ago I have an inlet in front of my house and so we have started um like shoveling snow that's another one another big the winter the Winter's whole thing but you do start to see once you know it's there you start to see how much even just a little layer of leaves will build up the the water so just an awareness yeah I think is good starting that conversation yeah excellent it's wonderful thank you Gabe yeah thank you appreciate [Applause] that okay I uh I had something not on the agenda can I about the Mis award so I know I'm going off the agenda but um compared to recent meetings this one's going rather swiftly um that's all I'm gonna say on that topic but this body uh the environmental commission is the originator and gives the me award to an eighth grader who puts together a video I believe now it's to it's a video or or it's a multimedia entity about one of The Preserves or or preserves you know one or more uh on the space it used to be that we evaluated these awards that was not easy as you can imagine you know um now the school is handling that part of it so we're very happy about that but the I just letting you know that the award ceremonies at cranberry School will be held on Thursday May 30th they invited me to present the award it includes a a Target gift certificate for the student you know so they get a little bit of of money there but um it's basically you know to encourage people to think about the preserves and present things you know create art essentially about their experiences there so I just wanted to make that announcement [Music] uh public comment now I want to put you on the spot I've learned a lot okay well we we always appreciate that came down street I went out and I walked through it and I saw it and I wondered how this could be prevented why was people were saying Lake wasn't is there any validity to that that that was not a lake issue initially because it was so much water in in a very short couple hours that essentially it rolled off of everybody's yards into the street there may have been some some some storm water in inlets may have been clogged because of the rush carrying sticks and you know quickly but it's not clear that even if they were open there would have been enough capacity to move that volume off that was a very unusual event my wife and I walked down we thought let's go see the lake it must be really high no Main Street was high and it was flowing into the lake eventually the lake did did rise over but that came later so it was it was an unusual event um you know that was just really anomalous I don't know 9 in in two hours I believe something like that unprecedent and and just like right in cranberry and one count over right and the rest of New Jersey didn't have experience that so yeah we were special we were special we were I out of town I turned on the Weather Channel and it said Cranberry New Jersey I was like oh no oh no this is not good not good so yes that that's something that now preventing that is a larger much larger issue um I mean but I think it is relevant to the uh the storm greates clearing them for more common less storms we still want to prevent that because you can have you can have flooding just on the corner of Maine and Plainsboro Road and suddenly there's a pond there or or further down in town and you don't want that either so but that was crazy the way it flowed down Downstream all right anything else um I just want to ask before we adjourn if the could if the committee could just stay for two minutes I have just one point of discussion offline with the commit commission not business not environmental commission business okay okay so with that do I have a motion to adjourn I'm motion second all in favor I opposed the eyes have it thank you