Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Environment Water Quality topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Byram council hears draft Lakes and Watersheds Management Plan; residents question waterfowl counts and modeling
Summary
Princeton Hydro presented a draft lakes and watersheds plan; Councilman Roseff pressed for clearer explanation of waterfowl phosphorus values and road-salt impacts, and local residents volunteered additional treatment and survey data.
Princeton Hydro consultant Chris Mikolajczyk presented the draft Byram Township Lakes and Watersheds Management Plan at the Sept. 17 council meeting, and council members and residents raised questions about the modeling assumptions and local data used in the report.
The presentation, available on the township website, reviewed phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment as the common drivers of lake decline and proposed lake-specific remediation. Councilman Roseff said he was concerned by what he described as an unusually low waterfowl phosphorus value used in Forest Lakes modeling — “very low at 0.08, or one goose for 4 months, when using Princeton Hydro's value of 0.5 lbs phosphorus/goose/yr,” he said — and asked how Princeton Hydro obtained the numbers. Mikolajczyk said the inputs were “based on observations at the time by the field crew and the model.”
Roseff also questioned whether treatments applied by lake communities were reflected in the modeling and asked that the report better explain the limited salt-loading signal in the study, attributing that limitation to a mild winter during the monitoring period. Mikolajczyk agreed to clarify the salt-loading analysis and the section flagged for reorganization.
Residents offered local data. Peter Smith, who represents Cranberry Lake’s management activities, volunteered the lake community’s treatment documentation and disputed the report’s stated residential-goose count: “the report presents that 4 residential geese are present, but my knowledge is that Cranberry Lake has at least 20 pairs of residential geese,” he said, adding details about migrating flocks and swans. Peter Dlugos, a Forest Lakes resident, said lake management is “dealing with the end of the process and what to do now,” and sought more concrete recommendations for next steps.
Mikolajczyk and Township Manager Joseph Sabatini said they would work to incorporate clearer QA/QC notes, better explain how septic upgrades required by NJDEP figure into modeled human-source phosphorus loads, and accept community-provided treatment records where helpful. No formal action was taken; the plan remains a draft available for public review.
The council did not adopt the plan at the meeting; members asked staff and the consultant to revise specified sections and to include additional community-provided information before further consideration.
