West Windsor adopts stormwater plan

Measure designed to comply with new state rules.

By: Emily Craighead
   WEST WINDSOR — The township will move away from steel and concrete and onto greener pastures with the state-mandated Stormwater Management Plan adopted by the Planning Board on Wednesday.
   "We are going to focus more on how to use the natural topography and apply natural ecology and systems in the design," Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said.
   The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection introduced the Stormwater Management Plan on April 1, 2004, and municipalities across the state have until April 1, 2006, to bring local ordinances and their Master Plan into compliance with the state-mandated plan.
   Most of the regulations will apply only to new developments. Development plans approved by the township since April 1 last year were required to comply with the new stormwater regulations.
   "Basically, all we will try to do is change our philosophy with redevelopment areas, but current developments will stay how they are," Mayor Hsueh said.
   The new regulations focus on minimizing impervious surfaces — such as parking lots — and minimizing land disturbances to allow more water to filter through the ground, a natural purifier.
   The township will receive what Township Engineer Jim Parvesse referred to as a "symbolic" grant of $12,000 to cover some of the costs associated with implementing the new stormwater-management plans and reducing pollution.
   Mayor Hsueh said he does not know how much the new requirements, such as cleaning water inlets annually, will cost the township.
   "This is one of the problems townships are dealing with — we have more state mandates to deal with" and little funding, the mayor said.
   However, West Windsor’s emphasis on environmental issues and open-space preservation projects means the township’s regulations already are closely in line with the new stormwater-management plan, according to Mayor Hsueh.