Environment

The $52 million Delaware & Raritan Canal dredging project is underway. The entire project is expected to take four years, although actual dredging will occur in 2018, 2019 and 2020, according to the New Jersey Water Supply Authority’s web site on the project. During this stage of the project, the canal is closed to boaters from Kingston to Griggstown, and …

The township observed the end of National Farmers Market Week Aug. 11 with a special versio of its own market. Organized by the Farmers market Coalition, National Farmers Market Week “is a great opportunity to show the nation how much value markets bring to their communities,” according to the organization’s web site. Rainy weather pushed the market from the municipal …

Update: The Township Council on July 10 adopted the recommendations made by the Open Space Advisory Committee, the Trail Advisory Committee and the Agricultural Advisory Committee, all of which change the hunting program from what it was this past season. Changes were made to the 2017-18 hunting season to allow for more non-hunting use of the Negri Nepote and Grigsstown …

  Half of the deficiencies that threatened to scuttle necessary state environmental permits for a natural gas pipeline project, before an 11th-hour withdrawal of the permit applications, were connected to the part of that project which falls in Franklin Township. The township is slated to be home to a 32,000-horsepower gas compressor station, part of the Williams-Transco Northeast Supply Enhancement …

A proposed “Peace and Non-Violence” monument park should not be located on the former Consolata property, a township advisory board recommended June 19. Instead, some version of the park should be incorporated into the Memorial Forest at Cedar Grove Lane and Amwell Road, the township Open Space Advisory Committee recommended. The committee also admonished the Township Council for not bringing …

The township Environmental Commission wants the administration to study two vastly different methods of controlling the deer population in Franklin. The first was to look into the cost and feasibility of fencing an approximately quarter-mile stretch of township-owned property along DeMott Lane and, alternatively, look into the cost and feasibility of fencing off that entire parcel. The second was to …

On Saturday, June 9, 2018 from 11:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M Somerset County Park Commission Colonial Park Gardens will be celebrating “Rose Day Festival.” The event will be held at the Rudolf W. van der Goot Rose Garden at 156 Mettlers Road, Colonial Par, Lot A, Somerset. The Rose Garden will be in peak bloom and visitors can enjoy the …

New Jersey’s forests are in a “crisis” because of the ever-expanding deer population, a Raritan Valley Community College professor told an audience in the Township Council chamber on May 21. Jay Kelly, an associate professor of biology at RVCC, told the several dozen people assembled for the Environmental Commission’s deer and invasive species seminar that if nothing is done to …

Deer hunting on Somerset County owned golf courses in the township is “not practical” and the idea won’t be pursued, the Open Space Advisory Committee was told at its May 15 meeting. But, the committee was told, the county is open to discussing other options for deer hunting on county owned land in the township. The committee at its April …

A graduate student’s proposal to install up to two dozen bird identification stations in the Negri-Nepote Native Grassland Preserve won approval May 15 from the Open Space Advisory Committee. Ahmed Awadallah, who said he is an online graduate student in environmental studies at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., will build the wooden stations, and the township’s public works department …