FAIR HAVEN – The borough Environmental Commission and Shade Tree Commission stepped into the digital age with help from a grant from the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions.
The $750 grant comes from the association’s 2015 Open Space Stewardship Grant Program, according to Kerry Miller, the association’s assistant director. With that money and additional funding from the borough the environmental commission was able to purchase three Samsung tablet computers with GPS capabilities.
The tablets will be used by the environmental commission, the borough Department of Public Works and Shade Tree Commission, to coordinate their efforts in identifying and tracking the condition of sick and potentially dangerous trees that will eventually have to be removed. They can include photos of the trees along with their locations; map the location of protected wetlands, layout future and undisruptive trails in the borough’s nature area and easily share the information, according to Ralph Wyndrum, environmental commission chair.
Traditionally this work was done by hand, which was time consuming and “a lot of work,” and subject to naturally occurring changes in the landscape and human error, Wyndrum said.
Removing the necessary trees cost the borough between $500-$800, according to Wyndrum.
The additional equipment “streamlines the processes and gives us a degree of accuracy we didn’t used to have,” Wyndrum explained.
The Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC) has been awarding grants for this program for three years “to support projects that promote stewardship of open space and awareness,” Miller explained.
Past recipients used the grants for projects “that run the gamut of hands-on work on trail maintenance and trail development,” to other preservation projects, Miller said. Nobody has used it in quite the technology-driven way as Fair Haven. But “I think it is the wave of the future,” Miller said.
