PECO Green Grants Support Local Park Projects

Inspiration for the design of the planned Steel River Station

in Pottstown's Memorial Park

Revitalization projects in Pottstown and Limerick are among those that will benefit from a PECO Energy grant program.

A total of $150,000 in grant funding from PECO's Green Region program, the company’s municipal open space and environmental grant program, will benefit a total of 20 communities.

Through PECO Green Region, PECO has awarded more than $2 million to nearly 300 projects since the program’s inception in 2004. The program is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to support environmental initiatives across southeastern Pennsylvania, including open space preservation, improvements to parks and recreation resources, and environmental conservation, according to a press release.

In Pottstown, a grant of $7,500 will provide part of the 20 percent match for a $200,000 grant being sought by the Colebrookdale Railroad to improve connections with the new "Steel River Station" it is building in Memorial Park.

“This project will connect the visitor- and trail-user-oriented recreation amenities of the new Steel River Station to Pottstown's Memorial Park -- one of the region's largest and most asset-rich downtown parks -- and to the regional trail network," according to Kirsten​ Werner, senior director of communications for Natural Lands, which helped PECO assess applications.

"This connection brings critically-needed hospitality and visitor functions to the park and the trail system. This connection also enables the station to function as a hub for what the borough would like to market as a district of attractions in and around the park. Funds are sought for an ADA-accessible pathway, a small but critical component of the roughly $2 million Steel River Station project,” Werner wrote.

Monday night, Pottstown Borough Council authorized the full grant application to be made to Montgomery County's "2040 Fund," which was set up to support initiatives aligned with the county's Comprehensive Plan, adopted in early 2015.

In Limerick, a grant of $10,000 will help to pay for an update to the township's open space plan.

"Limerick Township adopted an open space plan in 1996 to guide the township's future decisions on developing parks and preserving open space. The last update to the open space plan was 2006," Werner wrote. "Limerick Township will undertake a second update to set a new strategy toward the preservation of open space and the natural resources of the Limerick community."

Here are a few of the other grant recipients:

• Chester County: East Bradford Township, East Fallowfield Township, South Coatesville Borough, and Tredyffrin Township 
• Montgomery County: Borough of Jenkintown and Upper Merion Township
• Delaware County: Borough of Prospect Park, Marcus Hook Borough, Marple Township, and Rutledge Borough

“The municipalities and nonprofits receiving grants are putting their energy into the environment, and we’re proud to support these initiatives as PECO remains committed to increasing the environmental sustainability of the communities we serve across southeastern Pennsylvania,” Mike Innocenzo, PECO president and CEO said in a press release from the company. 

“Each of these projects will positively impact the region as they create new green spaces, revitalize vacant lots, beautify trails, and much more.”

Getting Up to Speed on the Spotted Lanternfly

This cheerful looking bloke is the second nymph stage of a pernicious invasive species better known as the spotted lanternfly. You will soon see these clamoring up and down your trees. Kill as many as you can.

It's not Godzilla or Mothra, but it might just as well be a creature out of a Japanese monster movie, although in this case, it's land or origin is Korea and China.

We're talking of course about the spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect species with about as many unpleasant attributes as you could think up and which began its invasion of the U.S. in our very own Berks County.

Photos by Evan Brandt

The crowd at last night's meeting was more than 60 people.

Hopefully you haven't forgotten these fluttering spots of color as they flopped around in late fall, dying in the cold but not before they had laid eggs everywhere.

Now is the time to be scraping eggs said Penn State Extension volunteer Sally Richmond, and put them into hand sanitizer or isopropyl alcohol, before then hatch. Each case holds 30 to 50 eggs and killing them before they hatch is the most effective control.

She was talking to a crowd of more than 60 people, the largest crowd she has yet addressed, packed into the main meeting room of the Limerick Township Building Tuesday.

Once they hatch, they will be small black and white, then red, black and white bugs that cannot yet fly. Putting sticky tape around trees, or outward-facing duct tape, will catch thousands because "they are going up and down the tree almost every day," said Richmond.

Volunteer presenter Sally Richmond with a slide of how the

spotted lanternflies will first appear after they hatch.

Now is also the ideal time to start poisoning the spotted lanternfly's favorite food, the alianthus tree,
also an invasive species from the Orient and sometimes known as the "tree of heaven," for reasons that would escape anyone who has smelled it.

Saturating the soil around the tree or even injecting it into the tree will poison the sap for months, thus poisoning the bugs who are feeding on it, and on other things as well.

In fact, were it mutually assured destruction of these two species, some might not mind, but they eat other things too, particularly fruit trees.

To be clear, they eat their sap, literally sapping strength from trees, making them more susceptible to other diseases or killing them outright.

The total potential damage to Pennsylvania agriculture and landscaping is more than $1 billion, and that's not even counting the impact on things like tourism and property values, she said.

But they are not very good at digesting the sap, so they are constantly excreting something someone with a sense of irony named "honeydew," essentially spotted lanternfly pee, that is sticky, causes mold and smells "like rancid peanut butter," Richmond said.

The business permit

In addition to killing them, businesses and travelers need to check their vehicles carefully and make sure they do not take them out of the quarantine area, which is essentially the 13 most southeast counties in Pennsylvania.

Township Supervisor Tom Neafcy, who was in the audience, said employees at his transportation business had to be trained on what to look for and complete a check of their vehicles before heading out, or face a fine of as much as $1,000.

The nymphs and adults can be very tenacious in 

clinging to vehicles.

Richmond said the state now issues a permit for business vehicles that travel in and out of the quarantine area.

In answer to a question from the audience, she said it is possible state officials may begin inspecting recreational vehicles traveling out of the quarantine area to other places, like the shore or the mountains.

Because they are new to the Pennsylvania ecosystem, the spotted lanternfly have no natural enemies.

Some are killed by spiders and praying mantis, but no local predator, microscopic, insect, bird or mammal "has specialized yet," said Richmond.

The white rectangle shows the outline of the spotted lanternfly's 

"piercing-sucking mouthparts" is uses to drink tree sap.

In China, the pests are kept in check by a "parasitic wasp that lays its eggs inside the spotted lanternfly's egg casings and its eggs hatch first and the wasps each the eggs before the spotted lanternfly eggs hatch," said Richmond.

Something like that may evolve "in the next 10 to 20 years," but until that happens, they are a threat to our economy," Richmond said.

And they are a threat to our peace of mind as well, said many in the crowd.

One audience member said she scraped eggs, killed hundreds of adults. "I was out there four times a day killing them. I told neighbors who didn't do anything. I feel like I'm doing my part, and will continue to do my part, but if no one else in the neighborhood is doing it, it feels kind of futile."

Richmond assured her it is not futile, but agreed that right now the best defense against the invasion is us.

She noted that it is estimated that since eggs were laid last fall, 1.7 million egg masses have been scraped and destroyed, each with 30 to 50 eggs inside. "That makes a difference, do the math," she said.

The information pamphlet she handed out were gone before long, but Limerick Township Manager Dan Kerr said her presentation and the information in the pamphlet, as well as links to more information, will all be posted on -- www.limerickpa.org -- the township website.

And with that, here are the Tweets from the meeting

(Lantern)Fly In the Ointment

Limerick Cops Get 4-Year Deal, 3% Raise Each Year

The Limerick Board of Supervisor s voted unanimously Tuesday to award a four-year contract to the township's unionized police officers that provides a 3 percent raise in each year.

The previous contract expired on Dec. 31. the raises are retroactive to Jan. 1, said township Manager Dan Kerr.

The new contract will apply to 28 of the department's 30 officers, but does not include the chief and lieutenant.

Beth F. DiPrete, Limerick's assistant manager and treasurer, said over the course of the next four years, those raises will cost taxpayers an additional $358,000.

She indicated that a starting patrol officer's salary in 2018 is $69,483 and the top patrol officer's salary in 2018 will be $97,008.

In a related vote, the supervisors also approved a request from the police union to extend the DROP early retirement incentive from two to three years. It was not immediately evident what, if any, financial impact results from that vote.

In addition to approving the new police contract, the board also moved forward with the purchase of a three-acre property at 1310 Main St. near the Schuylkill River in the Linfield section of the township.

It is adjacent to 16 acres of open space the township owns near the river but does not have access to, but now will as a result of the pending purchase.

Kerr said discussions to obtain the property have been going on intermittently for the past 10 years.

The cost of the property is $225,000 and will be paid out of the park capital fund, said Kerr.

The meeting lasted about an hour. Here are the Tweets:

Crowd Balks at Swamp Creek Trail/Greenway Plan

Photos by Evan Brandt

One of many speakers at last night's public meeting on the possibility of creating a Swamp Creek Greenway and trail from Schwenksville to New Hanover Square Road suggests Sunrise Mill should be restored before any thought is given to building a trail.

The meeting room of the Lower Frederick Township building was a tough place to be Thursday night if you were facing the crowd.

A presentation on the kick-off of a feasibility study looking at the creation of a Greenway and Trail in the Swamp Creek Valley, stretching across 5,000 acres from Schwenksville to New Hanover, drew a capacity crowd to the Lower Frederick Township building Thursday night.

Michael Stokes, assistant director of the Montgomery County

Planning Commission outlines the plans so far.

Not too many of them were there to support the idea of a trail, if the comments were any indication.

Michael Stokes, assistant director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, doggedly tried to field questions and comments as residents spoke over him, and each other, in their effort to express their skepticism about and outright opposition to the project.

Many said the stream, which empties into Perkiomen Creek less than a half-mile from the township building, the surrounding woods and the wildlife that lives there would be best preserved by leaving it alone.

"There's a conflict between conservation and preservation when you say you want to bust a trail through it all," said Jim Rupert, a 15-year resident of the stream bank and one of the few speakers who took the time to give his name.

He said he has seen quite a bit of wildlife along the creek and those animals are "very sensitive to human activity. It's 100 percent untrue to say putting a trail through there would not be affected."

A resident of Delphi Road says it would be dangerous to put a 

trail along the curved street where there are many accidents.

Others said Montgomery County has enough trails, while many others questioned what their property rights are and whether the county would be taking any of it.

"I won't lie to you, government has the right to take your property for a public purpose, but that is not our intent," Stokes said.

The intent of the meeting was to get input from the community and to outline some very early concepts for what the county is considering. He added that the county already owns about 60 percent of the property that would comprise the greenway and host the trail.

Since 1971, Montgomery County has owned the Sunrise Mill property and it is a key element in the greenway and trail plan.

A photo of Sunrise Mill was used as the first slide in the presentation.

Not currently open to the public, it was built in 1767 and is structurally sound, but it has not been restored inside, said Stokes.

Several speakers suggested public money would be better spent restoring the mill and opening it to the public, rather than conceiving of a trail that is designed to bring people to a historic building they cannot tour.

"You're doing it backwards," said one speaker.

There were a few who spoke favorably about the idea.

One Limerick resident said she uses the Perkiomen Trail regularly and that 77 percent of Montgomery County residents polled view trails favorably, although it seemed evident not too many of those poll-takers were in the room Thursday.

Geoff Creary, from the landscape architecture firm
Simone Collins, 

listens to input from a resident about
the map showing the 

proposed Swamp Creek Greenway
prior to the start of Thursday night's meeting.

Dulcie Flaharty, a member of the Montgomery Planning Commission Board, employee of Natural Lands Trust and longtime open space advocate in the county, said fears about eminent domain are common when a trail is first-proposed.

"Look at where we've done trails already," she said, noting that all but a few of the 200 private property purchases necessary to create the Perkiomen Trail were negotiated sales, and only one lawsuit.

But that did little to convince the crowds and at one point, a voice int he crowd said "it's theft of private property."

Finally, one resident asked Stokes pointedly, if the majority of residents speak out against it, "what are the chances really, that it won't happen?"

"That's why we're here," Stokes replied.

Subsequent public meetings are planned for March and June.

Here are the Tweets as they happened during the meeting.