EDITORIAL / ANNE BARRON

Highland Park's green challenge

Can Highland Park do it? Go green? Highland Park officials hope so.

Over the past several months, Highland Park residents have been confronted with "THE GREEN CHALLENGE". As touted in a Green Highland Park flyer, the challenge is a way for residents to engage in "easy and meaningful actions that we can all take to create a better future."

Residents have been offered a free flourescent light bulb and a reusable green shopping bag as long as they pledge to use them. Judging by the periodic mobbing at the Green Community Working Group table during the recent Street Fair, residents liked the freebies.

And nearly two dozen residents signed up to join a new listserv offered by the Working Group, one that will allow people to share information on the day-to-day issues of "sustainable living'. Clint Andrews, chair of the Green Community Working Group, has described these as opportunities for deeper engagement with residents about sustainability.

But making a society sustainable means much more than changing light bulbs and using fewer plastic bags. Activists are asking people (and towns) to reduce their "carbon footprint," the amount of carbon dioxide released through their daily actions. One goal of the Green Community Working Group is to reduce the borough's carbon footprint. Mayor Frank has promised town forums on the balance between development and environmental conservation.

Yet Highland Park continues to approve massive houses placed on small lots, with little yard set aside to act as a sponge during hard rains. Our storm drains are then overwhelmed during the ever-more frequent hard rains and local flooding increases. Disturbed by this trend, State Senator Barbara Buono argued for zoning ordinances to limit the lot coverage during a recent Global Warming conference at Rutgers University. This would go far to preserve some much-needed drainage areas around developed neighborhoods.

Municipal zoning and planning boards are constrained by the codes and ordinances as they appear on the books now. However, the power to zone, to create better ordinances, lies with the Borough Council. Typically, town planning boards develop their Master Plan to establish the appropriate mix of development, and town council enforces the Master Plan through zoning.

The borough council and mayor have already added eminent domain as a development tool for the downtown zone; this could be used as well to protect existing green spaces.

The new lingo of town growth and economic development -- "green," "global warming," "climate change," "sustainable development" and "smart growth"-- are actually old concepts, as old as we are. Overuse of local resources is nothing new to humans. In the past, we just packed up our bags and moved on. This time-honored tradition of leaving our mistakes in the dust has finally reached its limit as human societies have extended their reach to every inch of the natural world.

So how do we do this in a world that has steadily resisted our worst excesses, until recently? To join the discussion or to find out more about the Highland Park Green Community Plan, visit http://greenhp.org/ or contact Borough Hall. The borough's Highland Park 2020: A Sustainable Community plan is available at www.greenhp.org.