The good earth: Urban beautification grew from the soil of Princeton Nurseries, Princeton Packet Time Off, October 5, 2001
Flood study begins The Trenton Times, August 27, 2001
A stronger open-space law The TrentonTimes, July 23, 2001
Wildlife abounds at corporate sites The Trenton Times, June 17, 2001
Lawsuit claims road work is shortchanged, The Trenton Times, June 2, 2001
Saving Coventry Farm, The renton Times, June 2, 2001
Millstone eyed as protected corridor, Princeton Packet, April 13, 2001
Book Explores Interaction Between Experts and Citizens, April 3, 2001
Trenton: Water Quality Criticized New York Times, March 26, 2001
The good earth
By: Ilene Dube, TimeOFF Editor October 05, 2001Urban beautification grew from the soil of Princeton Nurseries.
There are walkways and roads that course through the Princeton area, offering the traveler an escape from the strains of daily life - a chance to daydream, a time to connect with nature. One of these conduits to serenity is Mapleton Road, winding alongside the Delaware and Raritan Canal from Route 1 in Plainsboro to Route 27 in Kingston.
Lined with London Plane trees and patchwork quilts of vegetation, affording vistas of Lake Carnegie, the D&R Canal and 18th century farmhouses, the road takes its passengers - whether commuting to work, bringing children to piano lessons, en route to a yoga class or embarking on a shopping expedition - back to an era before suburban sprawl.
It is especially poignant driving Mapleton Road these days, knowing that the land to the east, owned by Princeton University, will soon be developed into Barkley Square condominiums.
Nestled midway along the road, under stately maple trees and saucer magnolias with mammoth green leaves, is a stone house dating back to 1742. It has been perfectly preserved, and on a late September morning, when most of summer's flowers have faded, a bed of bright yellow black-eyed Susans reach toward the sun.
The stone house is the residence of William Flemer III, and before that, William Flemer II, and yes, even the original William Flemer, who founded Princeton Nurseries on these lands in 1913. Gardeners perusing the Wayside Gardens catalog will recognize the name William Flemer as that of the man who patented the Hydrangea Quercifolia Snow Queen.
In its heyday, Princeton Nurseries encompassed 1,200 acres in Plainsboro, Kingston, West Windsor, Princeton and South Brunswick, and was the largest nursery in the world, employing 300 people and providing the water for Kingston. Here, disease-resistant elm trees were developed to be planted from Boston to Chicago and Washington, D.C., when, after World War I, shade tree commissions set out to beautify our cities and towns. The nursery was a wholesale operation, selling to landscape contractors, garden centers and municipalities, including the New York City Parks Department.
At 79, William Flemer III, stands tall and erect, is soft-spoken and learned and has a memory sharp as a tack. Still active, he holds more than 50 patents to tree and shrub species. "It's my avocation," says the Yale-educated gentleman. "I do it instead of tennis or golf."
The story of Princeton Nurseries and William Flemer begins in 1868. William Flemer Sr. was considered the "dumb son" by his father because - unlike his four brothers who went into medicine and surveying - William wanted to go into farming, recounts his grandson.
William Sr.'s father, a builder, met a traveling salesman on a train who suggested the nursery business as a more profitable venture than farming, and thereafter young William apprenticed to a German nurseryman in Pennsylvania.
"My great-grandfather took a farm in Roselle in exchange for a debt," says William Flemer III. William Sr. started his nursery business there, in Union County, but it was too small so he moved to a bigger farm in Springfield. He soon learned that fruit trees had their ups and downs, so he specialized in shade trees.
Springfield was building up and the soil was not the greatest, recounts Mr. Flemer. "My grandfather wanted something a day's drive by horse and wagon, and so in 1913 he bought three farms in Princeton. It was the same year St. Joseph's Seminary (on Mapleton Road) was started, and Carnegie lake was newly built. The soil here was very good - it is sassafras loam, not too sandy, not too clay-ey, a little on the acid side - and it was on a railroad spur and near the D&R Canal to haul manure and limestone."
The grandfather sent Mr. Flemer's father, then 18, to run the new nursery. Mr. Flemer recalls fishing as a boy and seeing mules pulling the canal boats, and then later, tugboats.
Mr. Flemer's father served in World War I. When he returned he began acquiring more land; he often bought the house that went with the land in order to house nursery employees. Nearly 25 historic structures remain.
The stone house known as Mapleton, or the Van Dyke house, was built of Princeton stone (argillite) for a wealthy farmer in 1742. It had been used to shelter British officers during the Revolutionary War. William II uncovered two cannonballs while digging around the house. A door with a sliding panel in one of the upstairs bedrooms may have been used as a meeting place for Freemasons.
"The house was in terrible shape when my granddad bought it. Water got in. My granddad rebuilt it with an eye toward 'modernizing' it. In those days people didn't revere the past. Then my dad replaced some of the unique features."
The house includes 18th century hutches and fireplaces brought in from neighboring houses, and a walnut paneled study. There also is a screened porch affording an extraordinary vista of the Princeton Nursery lands. Stonework terracing is a perfect example of how the work of humankind can complement the work of nature.
Next door is a large house with a slate roof that Mr. Flemer says his father built as a wood-shop. It is still used for that purpose today, and must be one of the most handsome woodshops to grace this earth.
In front of this paean to woodworking is a yellow house Mr. Flemer bought from Princeton University for $1 in 1959. Circa 1800, the house was located on Route 1; it cost $13,000 to move. Mr. Flemer's son, Bill (William Flemer IV), lived in it for a time.
There was a stone spring house on the property. When Mr. Flemer was a boy, it dried up, so his father used the stone to create a spring-fed pond. William II also plastered in a stone barn foundation to make a swimming pool.
And then, of course, there are the trees - the Huntington Don English Elm which resists Dutch Elm; a copper beech with an enormous spread, and walnut and pecan trees. Apparently, William II was nuts about nut trees.
If it seems Mr. Flemer had a happy boyhood, he admits this is true. "And I had a happy career in the nursery," he adds.
The 1920s were profitable times for the nursery business. There was a building boom in northern New Jersey, Westchester County, N.Y., and Long Island. Big estates were being built, and cities were establishing shade tree commissions. "The sale of ornamental plants was fabulous. Every year the prices went up and up," says Mr. Flemer.
Then the Great Depression came, and everything turned around. "My dad was broke throughout the Depression. During World War II, there was no sale of nursery stock. Nursery stock isn't a necessity; it is one of the things people don't spend money on in difficult times. So my dad grew vegetables - tomatoes, peas, green beans. He had an orchard, and he trucked it all to a wholesale market upstate, where he'd get 75 cents for a bushel of peaches. Labor was hard to get, so we had German prisoners of war brought over to help."
The nursery business didn't recover until the building boom of the 1950s. Meanwhile, to make ends meet, the family tried to sell land, but no one could afford to buy property. In 1962, land on the Plainsboro side of Route 1 was sold to Princeton University for what was to become the Forrestal Center. "The sale of the property paid debts and my father could retire," said Mr. Flemer.
Mr. Flemer had two younger brothers; one was an architect, the other a partner with Mr. Flemer in Princeton Nurseries. "I was the grower and John took care of the business end," said Mr. Flemer. John lived across the road next to St. Joseph's. "When he died the estate taxes were so high we had to sell the nursery. We sold 500 acres to Princeton University about 11 years ago."
St. Joseph's, too, had fallen on hard times and sold much of its land to what is now Princeton Forrestal Village and The Windrows retirement community. The retirement community takes its name from the wind rows, or wind breaks, Mr. Flemer planted from 1949 to 1962. Consisting of arborvitae, cypress and spruce, the rows cut the wind and helped to preserve moisture.
Meanwhile, the brothers had been buying land in Allentown, and that is where Princeton Nursery is today. Mr. Flemer's daughters, Heidi Hesselein and Louise Gross, work there, and his son, Bill, runs Mapleton Nurseries on six acres rented from Princeton University on Mapleton Road. Formerly the seed-bed area for Princeton Nursery and on land that has been dedicated open space, this parcel was an Indian campground at one time. Before Lake Carnegiewas built, arrowheads and stone axes were found there, says Bill Flemer.
Surely the line of William Flemers conveyed to its progeny a passion for the nursery business. "It's very common in the nursery industry for three to four generations to remain in the business. When the kids are young, there is the opportunity for them to do something useful and get paid. They get exposure to it. My son worked in the nursery half days on school vacations."
Mr. Flemer earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in botany at Yale before teaching in the biology department for a year. "Then the biochemists took over and it was no longer botany as I knew it," he said, so he returned home for the opportunity to run his own business.
While Heidi and Louise studied English at Middlebury and German at Carlton College, respectively, Bill Flemer studied botany and horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. He owned a nursery in North Carolina for several years after the sale of his family's land.
Some of the patents Mr. Flemer holds are for the October Glory Red Maple, popular for its red fall foliage in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand - these can be seen locally in the Princeton Shopping Center; Greenspire Linden, which has a pyramidal shape without having to be trimmed; and the Shademaster Locust, a thornless honey locust popular for street planting - these can also be found in the Princeton Shopping Center, around the fountain.
Before patents were given for trees, Mr. Flemer's father developed the Princeton Elm that lines Washington Road to establish a formal, grand entrance to the university. Planted in 1926, the elms resist the Dutch Elm disease that plagued American elms in the early part of the last century.
Mr. Flemer's father also planted the London Planes that line Mapleton Road.
To develop the thornless locust - "it's a tough tree and grows well in cities, but the thorns of the wild trees were dangerous to children" - he took seed from thornless varieties and grew 4,500 seedlings. Of these, he picked the 20 with the best shape and grafted them, then selected the best of those.
Mr. Flemer has served as president and on the boards of the New Jersey Association of Nurserymen, the Eastern Regional Nursery Association and the American Association of Nurserymen, and was president of the International Plant Propagators Society. He holds numerous awards, including the prestigious Goldveitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society for overall work throughout his career. "That one isn't usually given to Colonials," he says modestly.
Corrington Hwong, president of the Kingston Historical Society, points to a section of the State Office of Historic Preservation description of the historic significance of Princeton Nursery: "The Princeton Nursery district is notable for the remarkably consistent picture it presents of a specialized agricultural practice, little changed in appearance and basic methodology since the early 20th century."
"Princeton University Lands is a remnant of rural agricultural areas of New Jersey that are fast disappearing," says Robert von Zumbusch, a Kingston-based architect and president of Princeton Open Space. "It also provides a greenbelt around the historic village of Kingston. The view from the road remains unique in its original context, with no suburban development built up around it. I would like to see part of the nursery developed into a historic and cultural resource center, much like Whitesbog in the Pine Barrens. The history of this property is about the interrelationship between man and land, between the built environment and people working in it."
"Although you are feet from Route 1 and other jammed roadways, everything is silence in the nurseries, as it's supposed to be in a place where birth is honored and sustained," writes Carolyn Foote Edelman, a Princeton poet and member of the Cool Women poets' group.
"Every nursery needs its cradles, and these, though metal, remain surprisingly nurturing. Their swaddling cloths are black plastic, once reserved for balling the roots of the finest stock in the land ...
"Continue past a massive locust, heavy with ruddy pods; then paulownia. Its 'nuts' are empty, but evocative, just like this land. On the right is a generous staging area, impressive as a ruined cathedral. Except that these partitions are not pews. Rather, stables for vanished horses. Vestiges and fragrances of mulches and rich soils permeate these empty rectangles. There is no wind, yet you expect to hear the tattoo of broken shutters, a banshee howling down a chimney."
Ms. Edelman wrote these words as a eulogy to the Princeton Nursery Lands, in the wake of Plainsboro Township's approval of Barkley Square's development on the portion owned by Princeton University.
©Packet Online 2001
08/27/01
By JONATHAN RIFKIN
Staff WriterResidents from 26 towns in five counties near the Millstone River and its tributaries are being asked to report flooding to federal officials who are researching the best way to prevent future deluges.
Greg Westfall, water resource planner in the federal natural resource conservation service, said the process began three years ago after flooding from Hurricane Floyd caused millions of dollars in damage to areas near the mouth of the Millstone River -- primarily in Manville Borough, Franklin, Hillsborough and Montgomery Township.
Although areas in Somerset County are hit hardest by Millstone River flooding, towns in Mercer, Monmouth, Middlesex and Hunterdon counties are also effected by the waterway.
Anyone offering information should include repeated instances of road flooding, basement flooding from an outside water source or any other instance of inconvenience. The data will help determine what kind of federal funding the Millstone Watershed can qualify for and where problems are mostconcentrated.
"We know there's a problem," Westfall said. "Now we just want to find out exactly where the problems are and what the best solutions are."
Westfall hopes a plan is in place by next year.
Liz Palius, president of the Millstone Valley Preservation Coalition, which is distributing a press release letting residents know how to report flood information, said every instance of flooding is important and can help protect the area from future problems.
"Hard numbers get us hard dollars," she said.
Manville and surrounding areas are already engaged in a $100,000 feasibility study being conducted by the federally funded Army Corps of Engineers. Project Manager John O'Connor said it's likely the area will mitigate future flooding by installing physical structures such as levees or flood walls.
Palius, a Montgomery resident who lives on the often-flooded River Road, said one of her main concerns is that the Army Corps project study being done in Manville may solve problems in Manville but worsen flooding upstream in Montgomery Township.Noelle MacKay, director of Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Management, said one of the goals of the the NRSC's information gathering and the Army Corps' look at physical mitigation to the flooding is to look at the situation and make sure that a solution in one area does not make problems worse in another.
O'Connor said the Army Corps is required by law to consider the effect improvements in one area have on the rest of the watershed.
"If there was some kind of flooding caused by things done then we compensate by either buying out the land that floods or creating a drainage basin to hold flood water somewhere else," he said. "We factor in the needs of surrounding areas."
Public involvement has come via the Public Law 566 federal program, which provides funding to local groups who wish to plan and instate public water programs.
Westfall said PL566 spawned a steering committee, chaired by Joe Skupian, principal hydrologist engineer with Somerset County and comprised of representatives from townships and counties affected by flooding.
Palius said representatives from the region were spurred to action largely in part to Hurricane Floyd, where flooding of 20 feet above normal was reported in Manville, which sits at the base of the Millstone River, and 13 feet higher than normal in parts of Montgomery, which drains its tributaries in Millstone. It is estimated areas to the North suffered $100 million in damage from Floyd flooding.
"This happened once and it will happen again," she said. "Manville and Boundbrook was where things were worst, but Montgomery is subject to flooding too because the Millstone empties into the Raritan River and when that gets backed up the Millstone backs up and then all the tributaries get backed up."
An informational meeting is being hosted by the MPVC on Sept. 18, in the meeting house behind the Griggstown Reform Church on Canal Road in Princeton, at 7:30 p.m.
Reports of flooding should be sent to Greg Westfall, who can be reached by phone at (732) 246-1171 or by e-mail at westfall@nj.nrcs.usda.gov.
Copyright 2001 The Times
07/23/01
By EDITORIAL
New Jersey, like most other states, helps preserve open space and keep agriculture viable by assessing "actively devoted" farmland at a lower rate for tax purposes. The law is too generous in specifying who can qualify for the assessment, but the principle is sound. Real farmers are helped to stay in business, and farmland, even at a preferential assessment, generates much more in tax revenue than it costs its community in tax services. A widely-cited 1991 study found that, for each $1 of tax revenue generated by agricultural and forest lands, only 30 cents was spent in community services. By contrast, the ratio for residential areas was $1 in tax revenue against $1.14 in spending for roads, sewers and schools.
One important reform is needed, however. New Jersey Future, in its "Smart Growth" report, argues for an increase in the rollback tax, which is a tax that's levied when the land is sold for development. It amounts to the difference between the farmland value and the real estate market value for the current year and the two preceding years -- a weak provision compared to those of other states. The penalty for development, namely the rollback tax, is far less than the gain realized by developing the property, and thus is no deterrent to taking the land out of agricultural use. "In fact, the rewards increase the longer the land is held," New Jersey Future says. "No wonder then that some experts estimate as much as half of New Jersey's farmland is owned not by farmers, but land speculators and developers. Today's farmland assessment effectively provides an interest-free loan to landowners holding their property for future financial gain or actual development."
The organization endorses the recommendation of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation to increase the rollback to 10 years, and to dedicate these revenues to the state's farmland preservation fund, which buys and retires the development rights to farms. Such a change is justified because, as New Jersey Future puts it, "The value of land is created by government policies and investments. So long as farmland is preserved, it yields a public benefit. But its conversion to suburban use results in both a windfall profit for the property owner and sharply rising costs to municipalities."
© 2001 The Times
Wildlife abounds at corporate sites
06/17/01
By MARY SISSON
Staff WriterHOPEWELL TOWNSHIP -- The killdeer was feeling harassed.
The brown-and-white bird was minding her own business, sitting on four eggs she had laid in a nest built in the ground near a path outside Bristol-Myers Squibb's Hopewell campus. And now a tour group, of all things, had come to take a peek.
"She's starting with the broken wing," said MaryBeth Koza, associate director of environmental affairs for the campus. "She's like, `Why are you bothering me?' "
Sure enough, the bird was performing a broken-wing display, a show of mock injury designed to lure predators away from the egg-laden nest.
But the tour group stubbornly stayed put. So the killdeer ratcheted her performance up a notch.
"Both wings are broken!" laughed Mike Hodge, a wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Habitat Council.
The bird and her audience were at Hopewell thanks to a program by the Wildlife Habitat Council designed to make corporate lands a little more livable for critters like her.
While manicured lawns and carefully trimmed hedges are still the norm in the corporate world, a number of conservation groups are working with businesses to try and change that.
Groups such as the Washington Crossing Audubon Society and the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association -- both based in Pennington -- work with businesses to help them create more environmentally friendly landscapes.
And the Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council has established a national certification program to designate corporate lands that provide habitat for native plants and animals.
The Wildlife Habitat Council has certified some 260 corporate sites, including 11 in New Jersey. Locally, a compressor station operated by Williams Gas Pipeline in Lawrence has been certified, as has the USX's Fairless Works plant in Falls, Pa., which sprawls across 3,000 acres.
More area sites may soon be added to the list. Koza hopes to have Bristol-Myers' Hopewell facility certified this year, and the drug company is considering enrolling other central New Jersey campuses in the Wildlife Habitat Council program, including the Lawrence facility.
Bristol-Myers' approach -- enacting the program first at one or two sites, then expanding it to more -- is fairly typical for companies new to the program, according to Hodge. "They need to see how the process and program can benefit them," he said.
And his job is to help them realize and recognize those benefits. "As a conservation group, that's our challenge, to make (conservation) widespread, to make it a part of the corporate culture," Hodge said.
Restoring rolling corporate campus acreage to natural habitat makes good business sense for corporations, says Amanda Dey, assistant biologist for the state Division of Fish and Wildlife.
Dey said corporations spend heavily to maintain lands that could be redesigned to virtually look after themselves. The end product would be large savings on fertilizer, pesticides and maintenance, with other benefits being a cleaner environment that fosters the development of native species of plants and animals.
"Corporate open space could be much more than it is now, and certainly beneficial to the corporation," Dey said. "Corporations can get a lot of press for creating habitat for wildlife," she said.
Dey, who works in the Endangered and Nongame Species Program, said state officials want to get more involved in helping corporations transform their acreage to natural grasslands, to aid native species.
One problem that would solve is a reduction of the pesky Canada goose population, which has ceased to migrate because New Jersey corporate campuses are ideal year-round environments for them, she said.
"These ponds that corporations have are great places that geese like to hang out," Dey said.
A change of approach
Such cooperation between conservation groups and businesses is a shift from the early days of the environmental movement.
Back then, there were "a lot of battle situations," like toxic-waste dumps or pipeline waste, said Noelle MacKay, director of watershed management for the Watershed Association.
But these days, tighter environmental regulations mean that a lot of pollution comes from so-called nonpoint sources such as lawns treated with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
And while you can justifiably despise a company that knowingly dumps toxic waste into the water supply, you can hardly hate someone for having a lawn. "It's no longer an us-vs.-them (situation)," said MacKay. "We're all them."
Although these conservation groups are taking a less combative stance, they still target businesses -- not because corporations are evil, but because they control a lot of land, some of it environmentally sensitive or prime wildlife habitat.
The Hopewell facility, for example, covers 433 acres. That acreage includes a tributary of the Stony Brook, two ponds, and a mature forest.
Despite all that, the Hopewell campus hardly looks wild -- it still has a mowed lawn in many areas.
Lawns are far from an ideal habitat for wildlife -- the open ground makes animals vulnerable for predators, and lawns are almost always treated with chemicals. "Our recommendation is to reduce the amount of mowed lawn," said Hodge.So the lawn at Hopewell ends a few feet from the edge of the ponds and streams, and bushes and trees take over. In many places, high grass precedes the bushes at the water's edge, indicating areas where the landscapers have stopped mowing and that will eventually be colonized by the larger plants.
"The goal is to build that corridor (of bushes and trees) out," said Hodge.
Not all the management is passive. Invasive species of plants have been targeted for removal, and volunteers have removed branches from the stream to improve its flow.
Then there are the bird boxes, which provide homes for bluebirds, house sparrows, and the occasional caterpillar.
The 28 boxes -- which are built, placed, and monitored by employees who volunteer their labor -- not only benefit birds, but also generate considerable enthusiasm among employees, according to Koza.
"It really was a great morale builder," she said.And building morale was important at the new facility. Some 1,700 employees now work at the Hopewell campus, most of them involuntary transfers within the past four years from other campuses that may have been closer to their homes, Koza said.
So she likes programs that make employees feel connected to the new locale, be they bird monitoring or nature walks or on-campus photography contests.
And employees can't be horrendously inconvenienced by the wilder landscaping, according to Koza. "You have to find a balance," she said.
For example, at the Hopewell campus, the wild brush growing along the shore provides shelter for animals, but it also blocks employees from going to the water's edge. Employees complained, so trails have been cut through the brush to the water in places.
Engaging employees is also critical to keeping the volunteer-based conservation programs going, Hodge said.
To keep their Wildlife Habitat Council certification, a site must be reviewed every two years. About 17 percent of the sites fail recertification every year, Hodge said, mainly because companies begin to rely on the same few volunteers for everything, then are left without programs when the volunteers eventually quit.
"If you don't diversify the volunteer base, they'll really burn out," Hodge said.
Grass-roots support can maintain a program even if support higher up in the corporation fades, according to Mike Maben, senior environmental engineer at Williams.
Williams once had a vice president of environmental affairs, Maben said. It no longer does, but nonetheless employees have ensured that the Lawrence site -- and several other sites -- haven't failed recertification.
"You've got to have people at the facility who have a personal interest in the program to make it work," Maben said.
The Williams site is considerably wilder than Bristol-Myers' Hopewell campus, in part because it is simply a compressor station, rather than a major research facility. About 90 of the site's 100 acres are in a permanent conservation easement, and the site has nest boxes and nature trails.
Employees have spotted foxes, wild turkeys, ring-necked pheasants, deer, and Canada geese.
And more geese. "Anybody want them?" asked Maben.Unwanted visitors
Indeed, large populations of deer, geese, and ticks can be an unwanted byproduct of taking a more natural approach to landscaping.
For example, Merck & Co.'s corporate headquarters in Whitehouse Station is a 535-acre site, withmore than 400 acres left largely wild, much of it forest.
Deer, naturally enough, have moved in. And that angers the farmers who neighbor the Merck site.
"They consider our land a fair haven for deer," said Jerry Nunziato, a supervisor for site services.So Merck has opened some of its land to hunters, who take out some 200 deer a year. "It hardly puts a dent in it, though," said Nunziato. "It's a real chore for us."
Despite the angry farmers, such wildlife programs usually help improve relations with neighbors. Schoolchildren walk the nature trails at the Williams station, and students helped plant gardens of wildflowers to attract butterflies to the Fairless Works site.
While Bristol-Myers is considering starting educational programs at the Hopewell campus, its major public-relations concerns are with a slightly older set of neighbors.
The company has sought to expand its Hopewell facility from 1 million square feet to 1.8 million square feet -- new buildings that would be concentrated within the Loop Road.
While the facility's open space would be mostly undisturbed, the expansion would triple the water use of the Hopewell campus, raising concerns that it would spark water shortages during droughts. Bristol-Myers was able to obtain approval for the expansion from the planning boards of Hopewell Township and Pennington, but it awaits approval from state regulators.
Programs like the Wildlife Habitat Council's can help ease community and regulatory concerns about a site because they demonstrate sensitivity about the environment, Hodge said.
Outreach is also important with landscaping staff, according to Koza. After all, being told to not mow and trim goes against established habits, and volunteers can be seen as taking over paid work.
"They have to have a philosophical change also," she said.
Adopting a more natural approach to landscaping might appear to be a big money-saver -- after all, no lawn means no mowing, no irrigation, no fertilizer, no weed-killers, and no pesticides.
But Hodge cautions that savings are hard to quantify. "Coming up with that number has been very difficult," he said.
That's because initial costs tend to be high, especially if earlier landscaping has to be undone and the area must be planted with native species.
And upkeep costs can vary, depending on how the site is managed. "Some people do it on almost no money," Hodge said. "I have other sites that have $25,000-a-year budgets."
But Hodge notes that creating a more natural landscape doesn't have to be difficult.
"If you just stop mowing, you'd be surprised at what comes back," he said.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Lawsuit claims road work is shortchanged
06/02/01
By MICHAEL JENNINGS
Staff WriterTRENTON -- Environmentalists have followed through on their threat to sue the state, charging the proposed state budget shortchanges roads and bridges in disrepair.
Led by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the five-group coalition claims the projected Department of Transportation budget violates last year's renewal of the Transportation Trust Fund. They filed suit Thursday demanding an additional $45 million be allocated for fixing deficient bridges and repaving roads.
"The governor and the DOT are violating the law," said Janine Bauer, Tri-State's executive director. "Voters approved adding more money to the trust fund on the pledge that our roads and bridges would be fixed."
Last year, the Legislature approved a four-year, $3.75 billion plan renewing the trust fund that called for repairing half the state's deficient bridges and roads over five years. The so-called "fix-it-first" provision was a triumph for environmentalists and transportation reformers. They have long argued DOT puts too much emphasis on building new roads, which promotes suburban sprawl while neglecting existing roads and bridges.
DOT spokesman Jim Hadden said the department doesn't comment on lawsuits. The DOT says the bill only sets the goal of repairing half the substandard bridges and roads by 2005. It claims the goal isn't realistic and due to limited staff, traffic impacts and environmental regulations, couldn't be met even if the DOT had an unlimited budget.
The DOT insists the deficiencies don't pose a safety threat -- that most of deficient bridges simply don't comply with the current design standards.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Saving Coventry Farm
06/02/01
By EDITORIALOne of Central New Jersey's finest -- and least-known -- benefactors is a land conservation group called the Delaware & Raritan Greenway. Among the Greenway's many achievements have been providing financial and organizational leadership leading to the permanent preservation of Princeton's Institute Woods, and coordination of an effort to protect and promote the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh. Its latest accomplishment on behalf of the people of the region and state has been to secure the purchase of Coventry Farm on The Great Road, Princeton Township's largest remaining parcel of farmland.
Coventry Farm was a prime candidate for development. A group of investors had been eyeing a 33-acre portion of the 165-acre farm for a 66-unit townhouse complex. But, at the urging of some of the farm's neighbors, the Greenway coordinated a campaign to raise $9.5 million to buy the land and keep it open. About two-thirds of the purchase price will come from private funds, with the balance from the state, county, Princeton Township and Princeton Borough. Under the Greenway's plans, part of the land will be added to the township's Mountain Lakes Preserve, part of it will be used for active recreation, and most of the balance will continue to be owned by the Winants, the family that has held title to the land for more than a century, but will carry a perpetual conservation easement protecting it from developers. It's a superb gift to this generation, and to future generations.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Millstone eyed as protected corridor
By: David M. Campbell, Staff Writer April 13, 2001Effort launched to include area in Scenic Byways Program.
Area preservationists are working to have the Millstone River corridor designated under the state Scenic Byways Program, which would protect the region through tougher local land-use regulations and could make federal grant money available for future maintenance.
The Millstone Valley Preservation Coalition, a nonprofit volunteer group, has filed a proposal with the state Department of Transportation, which administers the federal program, to preserve the 25-mile loop of road linking the King's Highway at Laurel Avenue in Kingston with Amwell Road in Franklin and Hillsborough townships where it spans the Millstone River and Delaware & Raritan Canal.
The affected roads include Route 518, River Road and Canal Road. Locations along the route include Rockingham, Rocky Hill, Griggstown, Blackwells Mills, East Millstone and Millstone.
"The stated goal is to bring attention to a corridor that is particularly handsome," said Liz Palius, a member of the coalition.
Ms. Palius said the application first goes to the DOT, which, if interested, would grant the corridor preserved status on a provisional basis. The deadline for the DOT to submit the proposal to the federal government is June 1.
Between the time of the DOT's approval and the federal application, the state, county and municipalities through which the corridor runs will work together to draft a comprehensive implementation plan for managing and protecting the corridor.
Ms. Palius said that plan could include stricter land-use regulations along the proposed corridor, regulations which would have to be approved individually by the municipalities.
She said the Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission has already agreed to participate in the effort and that discussions between the coalition and the municipalities are continuing.
If the corridor is accepted into the National Scenic Byways program, the Millstone River valley would be eligible for federal grant money to assure proper land-use and maintenance, as well as the introduction of amenities such as walking paths and bikeways, benches, tree plantings and, hopefully, said Ms. Palius, some restoration.
She said that if accepted by the state, the new designation would be in line with the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, which has as part of its goal the preservation and enhancement of areas with historic, cultural, scenic, open-space and recreational value.
The Kings Highway, which runs through Kingston, Princeton and Lawrence on Route 27 and Route 206, has recently been added to the National Historic Registry, and action is being taken to create New Jersey's Revolutionary War Trail as part of a central New Jersey Heritage Corridor.
©The Princeton Packet 2001
Book Explores Interaction Between Experts and Citizens
Date: April 3, 2001
Frank Fischer, Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University
in Newark and member of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public
Policy in New Brunswick, has recently published his new book:CITIZENS, EXPERTS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE POLITICS OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
In this volume, Fischer explores the often strained interaction between technical environmental experts and citizen participants and proposes a new model of politics based on participatory inquiry and citizen-expert collaboration. He calls for meaningful nonexpert involvement in policymaking and shows how the deliberations of ordinary citizens can help solve complex social and environmental problems by contributing local contextual knowledge to the professionals' expertise.
More information can be found about this book at the Duke University Press website at: http://www.dukeupress.edu
Trenton: Water Quality Criticized
New York Times, March 26, 2001, page B4
Citing federal data, environmental groups declared New Jersey watersheds the worst in the nation. According to an environmental coalition's report released last week, 42.9 percent of New Jersey's watersheds have received the federal Environmental Protection Agency's lowest grade for watershed quality, compared with 1.7 percent of watersheds nationwide. The groups have begun a campaign to demand the same level of protection for watersheds, which lead to drinking-water reservoirs, as for trout streams.
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