VOLUNTEERS STILL NEEDED FOR STREAM RESTORATION PROJECT

Join your neighbors on the west side of the Borough in restoring the Walnut Street Park creek to a healthier, cleaner-running stream.   Local residents will be working on Saturday, June 7 to clear weeds and plant native shrubs and wildflowers along the stream banks.  Volunteers will get hands-on instruction in restoration planting techniques.  Contact A. Tempel, Environmental Specialist at 908-226-7621 or e-mail at atempel@southplainfieldnj.com for more information.

The Walnut Street Park Irregulars had a successful planting day on May 24.  Invasive weeds filled three large bags, and 53 shrubs were planted in Walnut Street Park. Sedges, grasses and wildflowers are waiting to be planted along the stream banks.

This workday continues a project that started last spring.  A storm last April raised the water table so high that basement sump pumps were running non-stop for weeks.  The stream channel had been choked for years by Japanese knotweed, an invasive, alien species that crowds out native plants.  The dense growth traps debris, and the stream was badly backed up when residents in the neighborhood organized to clear it out.

Bound Brook Tributary 14-14-2-2 flows from the Plainfield border, under Tompkins Ave, past Franklin School, through Walnut Street Park, behind Fox Place and out across New Brunswick Avenue to Piscataway’s New Market Pond.  It is piped through storm sewers part of the way, and opens out into a creek again where it enters the Park near McDonough Street.  The banks have been eroding badly, partly because the Japanese knotweed does not hold soil well.  Erosion adds silt to the stream bed.  This suffocates animal life and reduces storage volume for stormwater, which can lead to flooding.

The WSP Irregulars are asking everyone who enjoys the outdoors and cares about the Borough’s environmental quality to lend a hand in this ongoing effort to reclaim the stream corridor from invasive weeds and trash.