Hopatcong Begins Updating Open Space and Recreation Map

Hopatcong residents had their first shot at providing input into updating the borough's open space and recreation map Tuesday night.

And they showed up.

A large borough hall audience listened to planning board and open space committee member Cliff Lundin, environmental commission Chairman Jerry Scanlan and Land Conservancy of New Jersey consultant Eugene Reynolds detail preliminary plans for the borough's open space. A few residents chimed in, too.

Residents were also given a 10-minute window to review the drafts of the open space and recreation map and the greenways map in the middle of the meeting. They were also permitted to view the maps at the meeting's conclusion.

Lundin said the public would have another opportunity to speak its mind at another meeting, possibly in January.

"This is the first, not the last step," Scanlan said. "It's kind of exciting there is a bunch of people here."

Lundin expressed the map's draft status several times.

"Any plan has to be flexible," he said. "Any plan has to be able to be changed at any time."

Reynolds explained why he believes it's important for municipalities to keep their open space and recreation plans up-to-date. Hopatcong's current plan is eight years old.

"You're looking at something that really impacts the quality of life," he said, "within the municipality on a number of different levels, and sometimes very directly because you can see it. You might have recreation that's convenient. And sometimes very indirectly because it helps keep your property more valuable. It helps make what's important about Hopatcong preserved or maintained and passed on to the next generation.

Reynolds also detailed the reasons for considering recreation while pondering the future of Hopatcong's open space.

"They very much go hand in hand," he said. "Recreation breaks down generally into two different categories where you're dealing with what's called facility-based recreation—ballfields, swimming pools, skating rinks. Well, ball fields very much need open space. Conversley, there's also called natural-resource based recreations, [such as] hiking, bird watching, fishing and hunting."

The planning board made available to the public its goals for the open space and recreation map in a statement:

• Provide year-round recreation for residents of the borough and pursue funding for facility development and maintenance, as well as identifying those recreational activities for which new facilities are needed.
• Encourage new developments to use cluster design principles to retain open space and, where appropriate, to provide for recreational activities and public access.
• Promote the establishment of "green belts" [large, contiguous tracts of open space] to serve as potential habitat for wildlife and as sites of natural resource-based recreation.
• Preserve and enhance the borough's waters by protecting Lake Hopatcong from land-based disturbances and by promoting a stream corridor ordinance for the borough's waterways and a well-head protection ordinance for the borough's wells.
• Promote and expand the use of conservation easements by the borough and by private land owners to improve the environmental conditions within the borough and to help retain the scenic and rural character of the borough.