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

Centennial Park Drawing

Centennial Park Rendering, Highland Park, New Jersey (old limo lot at Lincoln Avenue and River Road)