By Kaitlyn Kanzler, Special Writer
CRANBURY — the township is aiming to go even greener with a resolution that passed at the Township Committee meeting on March 11.
The committee passed a resolution to institute criteria and guidelines to make Cranbury a more “sustainable” community.
According to Barbara Rogers, chairperson of the Environmental Commission, she would like the township to become a certified sustainable community through the Sustainable Jersey Program.
Ms. Rogers said Sustainable Jersey is for towns to find ways to go green, save money, and take steps to sustain the quality of life in town.
”What’s really neat is that Cranbury does this already,” Ms. Rogers said. “So it’s really a rallying point for the town to say, ‘Hey, we do a lot of these things’.”
According to Ms. Rogers, Sustainable Jersey is a voluntary, non-profit organization that is a partnership between the New Jersey League of Municipalities, the Mayor’s Committee for a Green Future, the New Jersey State Institution at Rutgers University, and the Municipal Land Use Center at The College of New Jersey in Ewing.
”There’s a lot of brain trust going into this certification,” Ms. Rogers said.
According to Ms. Rogers, Cranbury is only a registered sustainable community with the goal of becoming a certified sustainable community and achieving a bronze status.
To become a certified sustainable community, the township needs to gain points and is required to have 20 priority points. The town already has 10 priority points from passing a resolution to create the Green Team, according to Ms. Rogers.
She said passing the resolution on March 11 would give the township the remaining 10 priority points needed. A total of 150 points is required to be certified.
”What (the Environmental Commission) did as a group is, we took each one of the categories and made sure we cross-referenced it and vetted it with the master plan, ordinances, and codes in Cranbury,” Ms. Rogers said. “We saw that it matches up nicely.”
According to Ms. Rogers, there is a lot of sustainable land use resolution in Sustainable Jersey’s plan.
”It’s basically to maintain development and redevelopment in a way that’s more protective of the environment and more livable for residents,” Ms. Rogers said. “I keep going back to quality of life and that’s really what this is. It marries economics and people and land use all in one.”
According to Committeeman Susan Goetz, becoming a certified sustainable community will qualify the town for several different grants.
”The commitment to being a sustainable New Jersey community is in the (town’s) master plan,” Ms. Goetz said. “It is something that we, as a community, have already committed to doing.”
According to Ms. Goetz, she and the environmental commission asked the committee to establish a green team and register as a sustainable community two years ago.
Several other items that the township has already done to gain points include, having energy audits done at the school and town hall, shredding day, the farmer’s market, and making Cranbury Day go green.
Mayor Glenn Johnson said he looked into regional land use commissions in the area as a consideration for part of the pledge but was unable to find anything in the immediate area.
According to Mayor Johnson, Princeton is part of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission that serves eight counties in Pennsylvania and three countries here in New Jersey.
”I think it’s terrific to reach out to other communities because I’ve actually started doing that on the EC,” Ms. Rogers said. “What are they doing right next door that maybe we could do?”
According to Ms. Rogers, the Environmental Commission is aiming to be certified by June and that a lot of the action items required to gain points is a matter of just gathering paperwork.

