“The environmental commission is working on the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, (ANJEC), grant that we were awarded for the Middlesex Greenway Extension Plan,” Waldron said at the meeting. “We will be planning a walk along the Greenway to see what vision we have and the planner has for the development of this vital resource here in Metuchen.”

At a June 1, 2009 council meeting, Waldron had mentioned that the Metuchen environmental commission had received notice of an ANJEC award in the amount of $8,000, the maximum awarded, to conduct a study of the Middlesex Greenway. Additional funds in the amount of $10,000 from two developers and $4,000 from the borough will also go towards that study, according to Mayor Thomas Vahalla.

Metuchen’s section of the Middlesex Greenway is approximately one mile in length. But the Middlesex Greenway is just one small part of a much larger East Coast Greenway (wiki) that will run from Calais, Maine at the Canadian border all the way south to Key West, Florida. Started in 1991, it is planned as a beautiful 3,000 mile lowland Appalachian Trail that will run through almost every major city on the east coast on public-right-of-way by linking together locally managed trails into a continuous route. Work is projected to be substantially completed in 2010.

In New Jersey, the Greenway will consist of a 94 mile long path from Pennsylvania to New York. Some parts of the Greenway will run through urban areas such as Trenton and New Brunswick, while other parts of the path will be of a more traditional rural character. Nearly half of New Jersey’s section of the Greenway is on traffic-free paths, and our state has the second-most amount of Greenway completed out of all states participating.

The East Coast Greenway Alliance, (ECGA), is the non-profit organization that is spearheading the development of the East Coast Greenway.

At the July 13 meeting, Waldron also said that the environmental commission is going to submit a pre-application to the Local Government Greenhouse Gas Reduction Grant Program, overseen by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). The purpose of the grant is to help move the state along towards reducing New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2006 emission levels by 2050.

“This is something we just discovered and will have single grants up to $300,000,” he said. “While we are not necessarily optimistic about [receiving] that amount, we are optimistic about our ability to suggest studies and opportunities to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to create some more energy efficient programs here in town, and to identify more renewable energy sources. Among those being considered is a geothermal system or perhaps some type of biodiesel conversion.”

Waldron said that the grant does not require any matching funds by the borough. If the pre-application is given preliminary approval by NJDEP, Metuchen will be given the go-ahead to formally apply for the grant in November.