Environmental Commission Minutes

April 9, 2008

Attendance: Kevin Edwards (Chair), Oliver Turner, Corey Nachshen, Phil Notestine, Tom Carr

Guests:

Andy Bulfer (Mtn. Lakes Webmaster) &

Earl Schneider GIS expert from Hatch Mott MacDonald

League of Women Voters

Mary Roseland

Ilene Tomarchio

Bonnie Rosenthal

Total: 10

Apologies:

Cathy Harvey, Todd Terhune, Khizar Sheikh, Murray Robertson, Richard Urankar (Council liaison)

Call to order at 7.39 pm

Approval of minutes

Kevin moved for approval of March minutes; no quorum at the time, therefore no approval.

Goal Updates

1. Riparian Buffer Ordinance

Current document was submitted to council - No feedback to date

2. Environmental Resource Inventory (ERI)

Introduction by Kevin: Updates on the ERI project - do we have a budget? Can the grant date be extended? GIS data access? Did anyone call the high school regarding community hours (Murray?)?

Action Items:

1. Earl - Offer of help with GIS work... Will network and find appropriate programs and maps. Will take requests of ERI and perform a Meta analysis. One solution may be to create Arc Maps which he may then turn into PDF files.
1. Will set up the software and educate EC members on how to use it.
2. Will work with Book Maps / Layers / Viewers / Zoom / Label / ID etc
3. Will put together a web site for the EC – objective is to enable large scale printing.
2. Phil – Approach Sandy Batty to get her thoughts on ERI
3. Kevin - Will call the high school re community hours. Will send to Earl the ERI outline of map layers.

3. Well Head Protection (WHP)

No updates.

4. Green Initiatives by League of Women Voters (LWV)

Mary Roseland, Ilene Tomarchio, Bonnie Rosenthal

RECYCLING– how to tackle the problems

• The public information, guidelines from the borough, is incorrect or conflicting.
• Where does the recycling go? This is not clear.
• Education is key – Media – Website and flyers – A statement in the Home and Schools Bulletin and maybe Neighborhood news? The Schools of Mountain Lakes do not recycle!
• How will the EC get involved? Shall we set up a recycling committee? How about creating an ad-hoc committee of the EC?

Action items

1. LWV – Will develop a goal statement, action items and objectives: What are the

‘barriers’: People and vendors; compare and contrast with other towns - How did they do it? Why? When?

2. Tom – Will talk with Mark Pressina from DPW to get his input

General comments

• Kevin: Please update the EC with any progress on your action item(s) if you are not attending a meeting.
• Black bear seminars: Kevin and Phil - Michelle Ruggiero will be the contact person for the seminar.

The meeting was adjourned at 9.17pm

Next meeting May 14th at 7.30pm