State Legislators Are Considering New Regulations for Off Road Vehicles

Hundreds of acres of New Jersey state parks, forests, and wilderness areas are damaged each year by the illegal operation of motorized off road vehicles. The Department of Environmental Protection spends a small fortune repairing the damage done by these vehicles that are growing in popularity. Farmers have suffered crop damage, pristine wetland areas have been encroached upon creating deep ruts that destroy fragile wildlife habitat, and steep slope areas have been eroded, a threat to water quality. Violations continue without anyone being held accountable because these vehicles are not registered and cannot be positively identified.

Two bills are currently being considered, one in the state Assembly (A823), and one in the Senate (S2055) that would require tagging of off road vehicles in order to help law enforcement and citizens hold these riders accountable for their destruction. The bills would also increase fines for illegal riders, increase penalties for repeat offenders, and help establish a fund for the creation of additional ORV parks to support legal, responsible riders.

URWA supports this legislation. If you do, let your legislators know. A vote on these bills may be coming up as soon as early January.

Photo:  Damaged Meadow in Big Cypress National Preserve, Bear Island Unit, Matthew Schwartz, Sierra Club

Road Salt: Helpful to Drivers, Harmful to the Environment

Are you disturbed by the whitish-gray coating on shrubs along our roadsides each winter? Does it bother you to come across heaps of road salt hovering over a stream bank? The answers to these questions should be yes! Road salt, which is composed primarily of sodium chloride, degrades vegetation, aquatic ecosystems and, of biggest concern to URWA, water quality. You might ask why your community looks like this every winter and stay tuned into how responsibly your municipality’s road crew is maintaining roads.

There is no single solution to reducing road salt contamination of local waterways and groundwater. It will require a combination of approaches including:

• more efficient application of road salts using computerized trucks, driver training, and accurate weather information to more accurately time road salt applications
• better storage practices utilizing sheltered storage facilities with stormwater treatment and control
• management practices to reduce losses during transfers
• management of equipment washwater to minimize releases
• locating “snow dumps” away from rivers and groundwater recharge areas, and collecting and treating snow dump runoff
• use of environmentally friendly road salt alternatives, such as calcium magnesium acetate, in sensitive areas
• education of homeowners and business owners about the environmental impacts of road salt
• policy changes such as moving away from bare pavement policies for secondary roads
• lower speed limits on roadways immediately following snow storms
• renewed emphasis on plowing

Tips to Give More and Waste Less

Did You Know?
The holiday season is the time of year when Americans increase the amount of trash we throw away each week by 25%.

Tips to Give More and Waste Less

• Give your time. Offer to clean someone’s house, watch their children, help plant their garden or run their errands.
• Give your talents. Offer, for example, your talent at organizing closets, your landscaping skills or music lessons.
• Give entertainment... tickets to movies, plays, musical events, a botanical garden or museum.
• Give homemade. Bake cookies or candies. Sew or crochet a gift. Make something unique and useful.
• Give to a greater good. Make a charitable donation in someone’s name. Donate slightly used toys, decorations, sports equipment, books and furniture to a non-profit organization instead of throwing them away.
• Give a gift that keeps on giving... a battery charger, rain barrel, bird feeder or book (a field guide makes a great gift for people of any age)!

It's Time to Start Thinking About Feeding the Birds

My thermometer recorded a high temperature of 63 degrees this afternoon -- not bad for the last Sunday in November, but I've got a hunch we won't be seeing readings this high again any time soon.  Most of the birds that travel to more southern latitudes for the winter left this area as the insect populations they typically depend on dwindled down through the autumn months.  Now, as fall winds down and Mother Nature makes the transition into winter, non-migratory wild birds that have been successfully foraging for seeds in the woods, fields and suburban areas will begin to scout out locations where they’ll be able to find a source of food through the colder months.  If you enjoy attracting birds to your yard by putting out birdfeeders, now is the time to make sure that they are ready.

Before you set your feeders out, wash them thoroughly. It is important to start the season with clean feeders and to keep them uncontaminated by washing them every three weeks or so. This is because birds can get sick if they eat moldy or decomposing seeds and hulls that accumulate on feeder trays and in the base of tube feeders. In addition, bird droppings that land on feeders can spread infectious avian diseases. To clean your seed feeders, wash them in hot, soapy water and then soak or rinse them in a solution of one part white vinegar to nine parts water. Be sure to give them a final rinse and let them dry completely before you fill them with seeds!

As the bird feeding season progresses, be sure to clean the ground below your feeders each week. This will prevent uneaten seeds, hulls and other waste from accumulating and becoming moldy. Left on the ground, this debris is quite appealing to pets such as dogs, which can become ill if they consume it. The debris is also likely to attract unwanted rodents to the area.

With your bird feeders in place (try to spread them apart so the birds aren’t all crowded into one small space), you will see more and more birds using them as the weather cools down and their food sources diminish. If there is not a natural water source nearby (a pond or small stream), your feathered friends will appreciate a birdbath or other water feature that you keep clean and filled with fresh water throughout the winter.

We Are Going to Keep it Green!

The election is behind us and if nothing else, URWA is celebrating the passage of the open space ballot question that approved $400M in funding. The final count was 53% - 47%. Once again the voters have shown a commitment to the preservation and protection of our state’s land and water supplies. However, those numbers represent a pretty slim win and the message here is that it is time to find a stable source of funding for the Garden State Preservation Trust. We can no longer take it for granted that New Jersey’s citizens are going to continue providing stop-gap funding without a plan in place for the future. The good news is that the Keep it Green (KIG) folks are stepping up their work to advocate for stable funding. URWA will continue to support KIG and will work to hold our new Governor to his campaign promise, “In addition to providing a stable funding source, New Jersey will look to increase the number of acres annually preserved. We will look at environmentally sensitive and rural land that is available, especially in the Highlands and Pinelands.”

A Good Idea on Two Fronts

Operation Medicine Cabinet is an effort to halt the abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs.  Here in New Jersey, the Office of the Attorney General, the New Jersey Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration and The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey have joined forces to address the problems associated with teenagers abusing medicines commonly found in homes.  It seems that while the use of street drugs has declined in recent years, teenagers are increasingly taking prescription and over-the-counter drugs to get high. 

This coming weekend, Operation Medicine Cabinet will collect expired and unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs at sites across the state.  Between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 14th, we'll all be able to drop off the medicines that we no longer want or need at designated sites.  Sites include community centers, police stations and government offices.  To find the site closest to your home, follow this link and click on the map: http://www.operationmedicinecabinetnj.com//index.htm.

We applaud the organizers of this effort not just because it will remove un-needed drugs from homes and thereby reduce the chances that the drugs will be abused. By collecting these drugs from consumers and disposing of them properly, Operation Medicine Cabinet personnel will also be reducing pollution in our local waterways. Pharmaceutical contamination of water is a serious problem. For decades, people have routinely flush unused medicines down toilets. Water treatment techniques remove bacteria, fecal matter, certain chemicals and many other contaminants, but traces of pharmaceuticals can remain in the water where they may have serious detrimental effects on aquatic life and on consumers of the water, including humans. While we don’t have a clear understanding of the problems, the potential for endocrine disruption is particularly troubling.

Until more research is done, we won't know how to completely avoid contaminating rivers, streams, lakes and aquifers with unused and unwanted medicines. For now, our best bet is to take them to collection events like the ones that will take place on Saturday. If you can't get your prescription and over-the-counter drugs to one of the sites this weekend, please follow the following federal guidelines (Office of National Drug Control Policy October 2009) for disposing them:

1. Take your prescription drugs out of their original containers.
2. Mix drugs with an undesirable substance, such as cat litter or used coffee grounds.
3. Put the mixture into a disposable container with a lid, such as an empty margarine tub, or into a sealable bag.
4. Conceal or remove any personal information, including Rx number, on the empty containers by covering it with black permanent marker or duct tape, or by scratching it off.
5. Place the sealed container with the mixture, and the empty drug containers, in the trash

Drug abuse and pollution of natural systems are two problems that our state faces every day.  It isn't every day that we have an opportunity to address them both in such an easy fashion -- we encourage all of our members and friends to take advantage of Operation Medicine Cabinet this weekend!

Keep It Green

November 3rd is Election Day in New Jersey. We may disagree on who the best candidates are for the various positions, but we at URWA hope we all agree that supporting “Public Question #1” is a good idea. By approving this question we will continue the work of the Garden State Preservation Trust. This $400 million bond authorization will continue protecting our water supply by acquiring open space, farms will be preserved helping to insure that we have land for local food production, historic sites will be protected for future generations to enjoy, and more parks will be created.

We all know what challenging financial times we are living through, yet this expense really pays its way. An acre of preserved land makes far fewer financial demands on municipal governments than that same acre with a house and family would necessitate. With land values at temporary low levels, this is the time to be buying land for preservation. The cost for all this preservation would be about $10 annually per household, based on a 20 year bond at 5% interest. Let’s work together and support the bond question.

Robert Reid, Land Projects Manager