Environmental Commission - Regular Meeting

EVENING AND WELCOME TO THE SPARTA TOWNSHIP ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION MEETING OF SEPTEMBER 10, 2026. THE MEETING IS CALLED TO ORDER AT 7.03 P.M. THE STREAM CAN BE VIEWED ON SPARTA'S CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE.COM FORWARD SLASH AT SPARTA TWP. ADEQUATE NOTICE OF THE MEETING OF THE SPARTA TOWNSHIP ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION HAS BEEN Open Public Meetings Act as follows. Notice was sent to the official newspaper, the New Jersey Herald, posted on the bulletin board in the town hall, posted on the town website, and filed with a town clerk. Can we have a salute to the flag?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Michelle, can you take attendance please?

Here. Here.

Here.

Here. Here. Here. All right, moving on, we have no minutes.

to review. We do have two applications. The first is for 14 White Deer Plaza, and the second is Franklin Mutual Insurance. Let's take a view.

So they want to tear this down and put up a single story. Are they expanding their footprint?

877 square feet so small i don't know i didn't see it looks like they don't see maple trees or any trees on here

So this is right on the corner there. Yes. And then is this the lighting place over here? Yes. Okay. Why do they need so many parking spaces?

Oh, that's to put solar panels in, too. Yeah, it's a big parking lot.

It doesn't seem like such a big building. I mean, they must have a lot of employees or a lot of commercial traffic. I'm wondering if we've got an engineering report from Dave.

Oh, this might help. Yes, that's why. This is like the architecture plan.

Right. So that's just the right stuff. Yeah.

a lot of parking spaces there's a lot of people in insurance oh is this selected no no it's not

Wow. They don't show anything that's going on around here. Global hydrangea.

It's... There's no native plants.

Do they say that?

Oh, I mean, Japanese grass, Japanese grass, Korean spice, Yoshido cherry.

Hmm. See, that's why we need an ordinance that says that at least 75% of the plants have to be native. I mean, if they're not invasive, it's not such a big deal.

Here we go. Red bud. That's technically native.

Oh, it is.

Red maple. I think that's native, right?

We've got a viburnum, but it's a Korean spice.

St. John's wort is native. know. So there's some but I wonder what they're doing with the trees on the outside. Yeah. So there looks like they are taking the trees down, but they're planting 10 sugar maples. That's nice. I just can't believe the maples are already there.

Yeah. Good.

That's Serviceberry in here, too. That's good. You know, Redbud and Red Maple.

So what are all those other ones?

That's a rainbow.

A rainbow. That's MSP in here. Yeah.

That's... I wonder how they come up with these plans.

.

There's no show tree removal.

i think there's like a said in the previous point a bridge so this might be a detention basin as well

you I have a calendar. Is this the same thing? Showing on the existing plan, showing those trees along the edge of it. On this, I don't see any trees. It's not protecting some of the trees. Stomps on the architectural site. Oh, I mean, it's there. Cutting down some vegetation. It's very expensive.

engineering you have to get signed and sealed curious why they trade

you Are you using farm soil? Yeah.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Hope you wanted to request me even more natives.

Not necessarily more plantings, but maybe some of the ones that are on the spot.

It would be interesting to defer to farm side and see what they recommend. 3000 Kelvin. That's easy. The three was. Well, consider banking some of the experience. In that same area, consider putting in some vegetation in the asphalt area. and potentially the possibility of putting some plants in the infiltration basin in the parking lot working with what's there

I wonder if that counts against impervious or not, the solar panels.

I think it should.

It should. What did you want to say about the solar panels?

It looks like there's some existing vegetation. They have a nice kind of rectangular shape.

I'd hate to recommend making it smaller. Reconfigure. Reconfigure. There were trees there.

It's up to you guys. There's a 24-inch maple. I think there's an ash on the other side, but the ash is probably not going to make it anyway.

It may not want it to fall. Yeah. Leave the maple.

In general, protection existing trees there. Make explicitly say in the plans, but it looked like they were clear cut and restore.

So can we just kind of. You have all these bullets, but if we just kind of agree that. Until we have better guidance. of 3000 Kelvin lighting and always there on the side of banking versus paving more if the parking can then become sort of a public clearing.

So trying to respect the existing conditions. I think it's too many things.

I'm concerned mainly about the parking. You know, I'm thinking that they should only have like about 40 or maybe 50 parking spots, but not 60. But I know they're getting credit for the EVs, right?

It says they only need 45.

That's a question.

How many would they need?

They don't need a variance. They're not going to spend the money. It's just grass there now.

It would have been nice to have Dave's report.

Well, we did. Did you see that? I thought I had seen that on the...

It couldn't get in, so... Yeah. All right.

So... Moving on to reports. Christine, would you like to...

Well, we enjoyed the HRMP folks at the last planning board meeting. And they did a very thorough job of explaining what would it mean for us to be on board with the regional master plan with them. changing some ordinances perhaps a little bit, the overlays, but I saw no reason to, and only benefits to trying this for our community, especially since there's an easy out. It seems like there's an easy out for it. I know that in the past there's been, well, when it first was adopted, many people, had wetlands areas and they were not compensated for that. And that's what Ben Spinelli was talking about, that that was his big bane. Nobody has really sat down and really figured out what would be fair for that. And that has always been adversaries. I think the biggest complaint that was like 25 years ago.

Yes, that's always been.

Yeah, right.

That's always been the complaint that people don't get compensated for

loss of value but it seemed to me like we're mostly we don't really have to change much to be conforming right that's what it seems like this is what they seem to indicate during their presentation and And there's so many benefits to our, I think, to our staff in terms of advisement and to our taxpayers in terms of grants. So I'm really hoping that they do realize that this is, you know, a benefit and sign the resolution that leads us towards conforming.

Right. And we would get additional help and funding for our municipal master plan reexamination updates, our environmental resource inventory, forest stewardship, a whole host of planning assistance, farmland preservation and agriculture retention plans, historic preservation, trails and recreation planning, open space and recreation plans. And also, you know, there's a whole list of benefits. So it seems like a good thing. And the, are you finished with the planning board?

Because that's really what we dismissed after that.

Yeah. Oh, and while you still have the, Mike, the trails committee, you haven't met, have you?

We did meet, and we are focusing on the Iron Horse Trail that goes from the Sunset Inn Road over to 94. And yeah, I mean, these planners from the Highlands could even probably help with that and make suggestions and be an advocate for that.

Precisely.

It increases connectivity for our community.

I guess I'll go next. I attended the New Jersey School of Conservation Day of Gratitude last Thursday. Programs to show appreciation for the people who advocated for their remaining open and the funding that they got. And it was, I don't know if anyone else besides Alex and I have ever been there, but it's a wonderful place. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Provides a lot of valuable education to students and adults from all over.

Beautiful place.

One of the things I did was water ecology. That was fun and Lena was there.

Oh good to see her.

Our former. AmeriCorps watershed ambassador.

Cool.

That was great time.

Did you catch macros?

Yes. Some Thompson flies and. What the other one was? I attended the council meeting and they passed a resolution to start the process of opting in examining or opting into the The Highlands plan Yes Anybody else seven.

Okay.

I don't know whether since we're sharing different things we've attended I got a call from the nature conservancy wanting to promote this event at the last minute, because they need grant funding. to start in phase one on the upstream area by Newton and Andover to restore Hyperhumus. And Hyperhumus is one of the headwaters of former peat mine, headwaters of the Pollenskill. And apparently, they've been waiting to get the funding to start their phases. I think they have three or four phases. and they really need to, in order to submit this grant application, they needed to have a hike to show that stakeholders, because this process has been going on for eight years, trying to get funding and designing, choosing an engineer, but now they have a good opportunity with the Green Acres grant and But they green acres wanted to see that stakeholders are still very interested in the restoration of this peat mine area. And so I found out on Tuesday. That we needed to have a hike on Saturday basically and so i've been trying to encourage people to come to attend because their attendance will directly impact the success of the grant because. They want to see supporters, as many supporters as possible. So I wasn't able to get this out to you all, but I just wanted to show it to you. It would be so exciting if we started cleaning up and clearing out that area. With this grant, apparently they're going to fill some of the ditches that they dug out there with this grant money. So we're one of the major tributaries going into the Pollenskill River, and we come into it just kind of upside of where the hyperhumus flow goes, and we kind of meet sort of in the same area, and then flow down to the Delaware.

Maybe you can send this. Send this to us and send it to Michelle to maybe we can post it on our Facebook one day. Yeah, tomorrow. It's on Saturday, so it's a little bit late now.

Yeah, no, that's I mean, it's just good to get this information out there because it's such a wonderful thing that's that's about to happen. So I'll send you a file.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Under unfinished business, we've been working on the Environmental Commission's mission statement, and Christine sent a version.

Rob had a version. So since the last meeting, try to kind of merge them together, pull out the good pieces of both. And then I think the idea is that this would kind of go on some of our correspondence and on our website as here's the core elevator speech of what the Environmental Commission does for the general public.

Yes, absolutely. It should be on our website. Thanks for doing that. Great. Do you want to read it?

The Sparta Township Environmental Commission provides science-based recommendations to the Town Council, Planning Board, and Zoning Board to advocate for responsible development and the long-term protection of Sparta Township's finite resources. The Environmental Commission fosters environmental awareness by promoting best practices to safeguard the region's air, water, and land for current and future generations. Through education and outreach initiatives, the Sparta Environmental Commission aims to empower residents and elected and appointed officials to incorporate sustainable practices into their daily lives sounds great so yeah we're happy at this point to anyone who has comments we could send out the actual written version but i think we're we're getting closer to it being pretty finalized i think good i would just um consider a space in between because

It doesn't matter. But after the current and future generations, that's kind of like our underlying. And then this is how we do it. So it's just like it might help someone reading it. Like this is our goal and this is our action-oriented thing. But I actually – I really liked it. I didn't want to say anything. to it but if we're talking about the regional master plan conformance and then i'm looking at environmental goals and master plan goals um i think this dovetails in really nicely with what we've all kind of take taken note of in the past couple years so i mean this i see this as kind of Fitting nicely in with the regional master plan can making everything fit. I'm trying to avoid using. Certain terms, but making everything fit in a way that is balanced for the community. So I think that we heard. Some concern about the conformance. Discussion which. has been happening for years and like the master plan goals i think taxpayers have been putting the bill for that and so i like that we could one get resources from the state um if we do a study and it's done with similar best best practices underwritten by the state um We we all benefit. In the region from. Kind of the same materials and methods that were implemented in that, so when we're looking at our stormwater goals, you know when when we're looking at our environmental goals from here for this town and then larger picture master plan goals and regional. goals. I just, I like that we're codifying thresholds. And we talked about the intensity and scale stuff, too. I think this helps us achieve that without we're not reinventing the wheel. And we're, we also have that higher presumption of validity on our legal challenges that we've been dealing with so um and and i think my frustration is that planning and zoning has been so reactive and this allows us to kind of be proactive um and i still believe you know attending attending that meeting uh with town council um and and learning more about regional master plan um that this should help draw i mean obviously it's going to help drive smart growth but i think in the end having those numbers and having that justification allows this town to sidestep the adverse the often adversarial litigious um hey we came up with this idea and We're going to sue if we don't get our way kind of mentality versus hey, let's collaborate. Let's come up with the best fit the highest return. Um, on your land value that doesn't. Put an undue burden on the entire community. So. You know, I just kind of looked through the mission statement through that lens of regional master plan.

then again through these next things environmental goals master plan goals and so i appreciate you doing this and i really like this all right okay if we're all agreed on this then let's go with it yeah great great thank you um fourth quarter uh environmental commission goals This year, we have which well that's on this list to our speaker series which. is probably something we need to talk about now.

i'm gonna. That got for for the speaker that I was proposing that got pushed to October with the medical delays and then some upcoming travel. So I need to circle back to that. So in the meantime. Barbara's not here, but. I had. I think we had talked about the native plant ordinance and I had put that out to a few master gardeners and landscape. designers that I knew in town, and I need to get back to them on that. But I think we said last time it would be good to have a discussion about native plants, but it would also be good to preface that with the tree ordinance being finalized. And it sounds like Margie's obviously not here. And do we know if Corey Stoner provided anything?

okay so that's the tree ordinance update and then what was our list of native plants yeah and then don't we don't we need to be compliant with uh ms yeah i didn't get an uh an answer to some of my questions but because it looked like there were other there were there was another ordinance we were out of compliance with probably

yeah it was it was do you do you know if that's part of their meeting or is it just the tree ordinance so maybe i don't know if we could just add like could they also just check on our compliance on i'm not exactly sure i think i remember seeing in an email that corey said we were in compliance yes That was recently passed by town council. I know the stormwater was kind of just replace this with this. Right.

But there was some other compliance. It looked like the website was either wasn't updated or there's still a couple of things that need to be completed. I have to go back and check. Yeah, I'll look.

I've been looking for the past year at the website, looking for we're supposed to have an easy access to our stormwater plan for the public. And I don't see that. And I know that that's a very important factor. It's there. It is there?

Yes.

When I clicked on the document, it didn't seem like the papers were filled out.

Oh, OK. I'm not sure which documents, because there were a bunch of things there. Yeah, take a look and let us know if there's something you see. Anything else? Anybody have any ideas for projects and goals for the rest of the year?

Are we going to do a fall cleanup?

Yeah.

Do we want to set a date for that?

That's next on the list, and that's what I wanted to do.

Okay. How's the master plan coming along?

Well, we haven't met since the Highlands presentation. I believe we're meeting in a week or two. some time coming up this month.

What is your next focus?

There are some of the goals I can't remember. I have to go back to my notes.

Sorry, but there's a lot I know.

Yeah, and I had the Environmental Commission's master plan goals on here as well, but we all participated in that focus group. So I think all the goals that we we mentioned in that meeting are on our list over in the high school no that was here oh here okay so um that brings us to the fall cleanup want to try to do something in october i would suggest According to Angek's timeline, that's when she'd probably be looking at doing that. Okay. So.

Cool.

Try to set up some dates.

You should do it on a weekend?

Yes.

Yeah. On a Saturday?

Saturday or Sunday. Sunday, rain date, maybe. Okay. We have four Saturdays in October. I don't know if anybody has any ideas of their availability at this time.

I'm not available on the 17th, and then the 31st is Halloween.

I'm not available on the 24th.

And it'll be hard for me to do it on the third also.

That leaves us. The 10th.

There we go. We have our date.

We have all our options open now. We could also do Sunday.

That weekend might be good, though, because it's Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day on that Monday.

So that's like a three-day weekend for people.

That could be good.

Yeah, so that's the 10th, right? Let's shoot for that.

Should I mention this to the planning board? Or do we need to talk to somebody else?

You can. I don't think we need to.

I don't want to get them too excited. When do we usually meet? 9 o'clock, 8 o'clock?

7? No. Usually I think we have a meeting at 9.

9? Okay. I'll leave it there until we, like 9 to noon? Yeah, something like that.

Hmm?

October 10th?

Yes. 10-10. 10-10.

You'd be lucky.

At 10-10. At 10-10. Great.

Right.

Okay. We did have something under new business, but Since we didn't, that was the email you sent Chris today.

Yeah.

Is there a lot of material?

Well, we've been going from town to town, and we do give a folder full of information, like map of our tributary to the Paulinskill. We do give a timeline.

Let me just say what we're talking about here so the public knows. We're talking about the Paulinskill Wild and Scenic Study.

Right. Right. um so we usually when we go to a town not all towns have ECs they usually have land use boards but we usually get their input first and do a little presentation and then if they think it's a good idea for their town to support then they pass a ready-made resolution on to the town council That's pretty simple. We're just asking for support so that we can have a study funded by the government. And there's no cost to our township or anything. But we want to get as many support letters as possible so that Congress will approve the funding for us.

Yeah. So are there a lot of

documents to review or well i can bring it ahead of time i mean there's not really i can just we can go through page by page really quick i just feel like i've been doing this for all the other towns and that if i didn't do it for my own town that i would be remiss in and just you know just smoothing over i mean i could go to just the town council meeting and ask them for support but i want your input and i want your questions all right could you send us the the material in advance and we'll talk about it in the next meeting sure that's a lot of files though it's a lot of it's like six different files um have you have you done it as a presentation in other towns with flies i usually just you know introduce myself and then i hand everybody It and then we go through it page by page by page quickly and then I take questions and there's usually none because you could be our speaker or next speaker, I will be your next speaker on the brain for that's right yeah. I mean, I do have a I don't want to. cause any inconvenience but we do have like powerpoints and things like that but i don't think at this point it's really that necessary but if you want me to do a brief powerpoint i could do that also so decide and you know i think it would be good do you guys think it would be good to have some time sure okay all right thank you thank you

Moving on, we have no correspondence. There's no one here for public comment. Can I have a motion to adjourn?

I'll make that motion to adjourn.

Second? I'll second. All in favor?