Spring Has Arrived. Birds Have Migrated From The South.

Since March 24, 2024, these three birds have arrived in Johnson Park completing their migration from the south. The Peregrin Falcon hangs out by the John Lynch Bridge in the trees along the park side of the Raritan River. It has been speculated that last year, a pair nested on a bridge girder.

The Double Crested Cormorant can seen in the pond across from the old zoo or in the trees between the pond and the Raritan river. The Osprey (fish hawk) can occasionally be seen in the same trees as the Cormorant but is frequently seen flying over the river. They sometime just flutter their wings and stay in one position and then dive into the river to catch a fish.

Eagle Scout Project: Benches

The Environmental Commission has sponsored several Eagle Scout projects. The one that has received most interest is Jon Winter’s bench project where he and his team built f our benches located in The Meadows.  As the Environmental Commission has moved to a new website, we have migrated the documentation for building these benches to this site. Andrew Bowman is another Eagle Scout, who also built benches based on Jon’s plans. He has provided even more detailed plans for these benches. Link to the Jon’s and Andrew’s plans are below.

Any scout or any other person is free to utilize these plans to build their own benches. No permission is needed.

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For the Birds

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For the past several years, there has been a nesting pair of Eagles in the Johnson Park area. They are frequently spotted near the top of the largest tree between the pond behind the Johnson Park zoo and the Raritan River (see above). The Eagle is seen 2-3 times a week on this tree. On rare occasions, you will see two Eagles in this tree.

During the winter the Raritan River by Johnson and Donaldson Parks is host to many “winter” ducks including Buffleheads, Common Golden Eye, Common Merganser, Red Breasted Merganser, Hooded Merganser, and occasionally Common Loons. 

Buffleheads were seen off Johnson Park by the John Lynch Bridge in mid November.

What New in the Highland Park Meadows

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As many resident are aware PSE&G is building a solar farm on the Upper Meadows adjacent to Donaldson Street. This location use to be a municipal landfill, which was closed prior to there being any DEP regulations. As part of the approval process, DEP wanted concrete and asphalt removed from specified areas of the (lower) Meadows. 

A great deal of concrete has been from first 50 feet of the Meadows trail and various locations along the loop trail making the area more natural.

The Meadows volunteers have built a new boardwalk over a marshy area on trail spur leading to the Raritan River. This should make access to the river much easier especially during new and full moon high tides.

Remediation at American Properties, Cleveland Avenue, is Complete

The remediation of American Properties, Cleveland Avenue (Midland-Ross, old Illuminating Experience site) by Honeywell has been completed. The site will be the future home of Heritage at Highland Park. 

The following three reports, which are available for review in the Borough Clerk’s Office, document the cleanup/remediation:

1. Remedial Investigation Report/Remedial Action Work Plan for Soils –Full Report.
2. Remedial Investigation Report for Groundwater = Full Report
3. Preliminary Assessment/Site Investigation Report for Groundwater Area of Concern MR=9 – Full Report

American Properties, LLC is now grading the site prior to initiating construction of the condominium complex.

ANW

Remediation Continues at Midland=Ross/American Home Properties Highland Park LLC…

Remediation continues at 100 Cleveland Avenue (the former Midland-Ross Corporation and Illuminating Experience sites). The site is being remediated by Honeywell Corporation, which assumed responsibility when Midland-Ross was acquired many years ago. This is the final phase of the cleanup of this industrial site, which was contaminated by past industries.  The site is concurrently being redeveloped by American Home Properties Highland Park LLC as a residential condo community.

During the remediation, particle detectors monitor dust levels and air samples are taken to monitor for potential chemical contamination. There are 5 air-monitoring stations on the site, which is diagrammed in the attached reports.   There are trigger levels for dust levels  (8o μg/cubic meter), which will require investigation and actions levels (109 μg/cubic meter) where work is stopped.Ten reports for the following dates are provided:

There were a few anomalies in the dust levels due to wind or activities close to air monitoring stations such as wood chipping or unloading clean fill. One anomaly was the failure of the network collecting data with reading going to zero. These anomalies have duration of last seconds. On occasion, air chemical contamination was detected just above the detection levels but far below levels of concern. These contaminates were the expected compounds from this site,

Questions – contact the Environmental Commission via the Contact Menu.

On The Meadows Trail

The leaves on the trees are starting to show their colors and the last of this season’s White Snakeroot is still in blossom along the trail, which means our work season for this year will be over fairly soon.

And since it’s been a while since the last update, so we thought this was good time to let everyone know what’s been happening out “On the Meadows Trail”.

The weather played a big part in our regular management of the trail this year. There were too many weekends when it would rain and we weren’t able to do our regular mowing and trimming to make sure it was enjoy able and safe for everyone.  We expect to be able to mow the grassy sections of the trail at least once more before winter as we do the annual cutting of non-native invasive plants in the trailside areas.

We have a bit more work to do on the new trail entrance that we built last year and we’re nearly done with construction of the new observation platform. The new entrance will get some non-skid material applied to its surface – a weather dependent task – and the path to the observation platform needs some work.  Both these projects were funded throughhe National Recreational Trails grant that was awarded to the Boro in 2016.

Once our work for this year completed we’ll be looking ahead to getting underway again in the Spring.  Next year will be another busy one. There’ll be a major effort to manage the non-native invasive plant populations in the Meadows; we’ll be putting in an order for some new trees and other native plants for planting in April; and a new section of trail will be built leading from the main trail to the upper part of the Bike Path. We wanted to work on this new trail section during 2018 but have had to wait until PSE&G stakes out the outline of the solar farm that will be built on the upper portion of the Meadows. We’ll have more to report on this as the project progresses.

We hope everyone who’s used the trail has enjoyed the experience.  If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, or would like to become a member of the Meadows Trail Crew, let us know. We’re out working on the trail every Sunday morning (weather permitting), or you can get in touch with us through the Environmental Commission web site.

Steve Barnes

Environmental Commission