A dollar buys environmental dream
'Big brother' will transform Clark reservoir into nature preserve

Sunday, March 11, 2007

For years, environmentalists and local officials have talked of transforming the Clark reservoir into a nature preserve, where visitors could watch herons and egrets glide along the wooded shoreline.

But township officials feared the 150-acre expanse was too vast for them to maintain. So the reservoir has languished behind "no-trespassing" signs as trash collected in the reeds.

Last week, after years of discussion, the Union County freeholder board agreed to take over the reservoir. Within the next few months, it will buy the property from Clark for $1, then begin talks with local officials about transforming it into a preserve.

"I think it's a very important environmental site," said Freeholder Dan Sullivan, chair of the board's open space committee.

The two-mile-long reservoir runs from Raritan Road to Madison Hills Road and is the county's largest body of water. Environmentalists say it is crucial to birds migrating along the Eastern Seaboard, including black-and-white warblers, gray-crested flycatchers and occasional ospreys.

The reservoir, which has not been tapped for drinking water since the 1970s, is actually a stretch of the Rahway River's Robinson branch. It was first dammed by the Middlesex Water Co. in 1907, according to Brian Toal, the Clark Township historian.

The township bought it from the water company in 1997 for $10 and renamed it the Clark Wildlife Preserve and Habitat.

The long, narrow reservoir already abuts Milton Lake Park in Rahway and, Sullivan said, will fit appropriately into the Union County parks system.

The system, designed in the 1920s with help from the firm of legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, is largely an interconnected complex of greenswards along the banks of rivers and ponds. The idea was to weave ribbons of green though suburban sprawl, enabling residents to walk clear across the county without leaving parkland.

Clark officials are looking forward to seeing their reservoir incorporated into that legacy.

"I am very happy about this," said Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso. "I always believed this was a project for a big brother ... and the big brother in this situation is county government."

Freeholders plan to work with Clark officials in the coming months to develop a plan for the preserve, which will be funded through the county's Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund.

In 1999, the township council drafted a plan for the reservoir calling for a fishing area off Old Raritan Road, an observation pier behind Arthur L. Johnson High School and several walking trails.

Development of the property is limited by a 1997 conservation easement granted to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation that mandates that the reservoir be preserved in its natural state.

"Basically it is only open for passive recreation," said Lisa MacCollum, the foundation's assistant director of land acquisition.

Walking trails and fishing or observation piers are permitted, but ball fields and buildings are not, she said. Boating could be allowed under the easement, provided the crafts are not motorized, MacCollum said.

Victoria Drake, administrator of the Open Space Trust Fund, said the county has every intention of honoring the easement.

"We are going to be very careful as we go forward," Sullivan said.

Joe Ryan may be reached at jryan@starledger.com or (908) 302-1508.

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