Rutgers report to be presented on Wednesday
Greg Forester
Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — Rutgers University officials will be in town Wednesday presenting a report on how to maintain township resources and quality of life for generations to come, through a future of sustainable development.
The goal given three years ago to the authors of the 130-page report — from Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning — was to establish sustainability as a guiding principle for government planning and practices and ultimately influence the planning and practices of the broader community to become more sustainable.
They will be returning to present their work to the Planning Board this week.
”Sustainable development means understanding the social, economic and environmental conditions necessary to sustain a high quality of life and ensuring that those conditions are preserved for us and future generations,” according to the report’s introduction.
The report identified various methods to attain sustainability and developed benchmarks to measure the success of the township in working towards sustainable development. The document began as an initiative commissioned through the township’s Environmental Commission.
The strategy for West Windsor was broken down into five groups — land use, circulation, society, natural resources, and government — providing the township with a detailed roadmap of how to work toward sustainability.
Each of the five groups was also paired with lists of statistics and other measurable data that could be used as measurements of success for any strategy implemented by the township.
These report items will help provide a way for the West Windsor community to understand the benefits of implementing sustainable development, according to Councilwoman Heidi Kleinman.
”It creates a context for the discussion about what we can do in our town,” Ms. Kleinman said.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said the Sustainable West Windsor Plan and others like it could be used to ensure more responsible development that maintained a high quality of life, in West Windsor and elsewhere.
”We can use the plan as a basis for sustainable development not only in West Windsor, but across the whole state,” said Mayor Hsueh, who is a member of the State Planning Commission.
Funding for the original initiative was provided through a $5,000 grant from the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions and augmented by an additional $20,000 of funding from the New Jersey Office of Smart Growth. The initiative uses measuring tools and strategies borrowed from established sustainability plans like that of New York City, Minneapolis, and Jacksonville, Fla., according to the report.
Mayor Hsueh said he hopes to see the Planning Board will eventually move to adopt the framework of the sustainability report as a part of the township’s Master Plan, and government officials develop new ordinances and work on existing ordinances to implement the elements of the report.
Mayor Hsueh said sustainability and any strategies the township adopts would have an effect on any redevelopment plan that would be accepted for the 350-acre redevelopment zone around the Princeton Junction train station.
Township Council officials, who recently turned the task of planning the redevelopment over to the Planning Board, said sustainability was already a priority for any development that would come to West Windsor in the future.
”We have already been encouraging the concepts of sustainability, that is the direction we are going in,” said Councilwoman Linda Geevers. “We are going green.”
Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Municipal Building.