Sustainable
The borough of Atlantic Highlands not only retained certification but received it at a higher level and topped it off with also receiving the Small Town Champion Award from Sustainable Jersey, a major accomplishment that seems to have gotten little recognition and certainly no fanfare.
The borough doesn’t know yet whether Councilman James Murphy or Councilwoman Lori Hohenleitner will be the next Mayor. Nor does it know whether Ellen O’Dwyer and Coach Whitehead or Allison Forbes and Jon Crowley will be the council members for the next three years, though Councilman Crowley seems almost certain to be selected for another term. Hopefully by sometime next week, the results will be finalized and announced.
But aside from the politics of the situation, let’s take a look at Ellen O’Dwyer and what her quiet, unannounced, little-talked-about efforts have done for the borough’s image.
Literally.
Sustainable Jersey is a state-wide organization that certifies municipalities who are the nation’s leaders in implementing solutions for challenges to reduce waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Municipalities also must certify they have taken measures to improve public health among other things, which also stimulates the local economy and offers grants to accomplish even more for a borough. Just about every municipality in New Jersey is registered with Sustainable Jersey, but not many have achieved the successes that Atlantic Highlands has.
Awards this year were presented by Christine Guhl-Sadovy, President, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
Enter Ellen O’Dwyer, one of the candidates waiting to see if she has been elected to council. Currently, Ellen chairs the borough’s GREEN TEAM, a quiet but hardworking group of dedicated residents following Ellen’s penchant for getting things done. That’s why the borough has been certified for several cycles and last year got the Bronze award, no small accomplishment. She is also a former Environmental Commissioner and former Shade Tree Commissioner, both of which she feels were important experiences in order to have achieved what she did with the Green Team.
This year this ambitious group aimed for the silver award it received, an award that mandated achieving more than twice as many points as the Bronze award. But they also were awarded the champion Award for being the very best Small town; a community under 5,000 residents in New Jersey …. for sustainability.
Sustainable Jersey, under the Sustainability Institute at The College of New Jersey, doesn’t make it easy to achieve their awards. They set a high bar and have an entire team of professionals who verify what each town says it has done.
Ellen and her team could have simply settled for their bronze award. Each award is good for three years, so maintaining bronze is in itself an accomplishment. But she’s a driver and passionate about the environment. She served for a year on the Beautification Committee and Environmental commission before Mayor Loretta Gluckstein had faith in her enthusiasm and named her to the Shade Tree as well as the Green Team Committee, an advisory group to the governing body.
In the past, the borough was interested in maintaining its certification as a member of Sustainable Jersey, but Ellen strove to go higher. She did a lot of research and found that as far as recycling and reusing goes, the borough has done an awful lot over the years, thanks to a great Public Works Department and residents who take pride in their neighborhood. But moving higher and better seemed like a better idea, so Ellen did more research and documented all the accomplishments and memorialized them into programs. That is what earned the Bronze medal last year.
This year, rather than simply being recognized for maintaining the bronze status, taking the silver award also enabled the borough to receive the Small Town Champion award.
“We could have rested on our laurels for three years, but we didn’t.,” the chairman said. “Atlantic Highlands deserves the credit for all the work that it is already doing, and with a community whose heart is in it. We went for Silver and achieved it in one year by completing some innovative projects, like being the first community to adopt a ban on plastic straws and bags and partnering with a local company on biodegradable packaging solutions. We applied for and received two grants, educated on native species, shared wildflowers and milkweed, and encouraged green solutions to anything and everything,” The Captain of the Green Team explained.
At the League of Municipalities annual event in Atlantic City, Sustainable Jersey had a luncheon to honor all the municipalities who received honors. In her acceptance talk, in which she praised both Sustainable Jersey’s efforts and her own team and borough residents Ellen said “We’ve got a real “walking” town where the sidewalk outside your door can lead you to anywhere you would want to go in the borough, and our tree-lined streets are the result of our Tree City USA commitment of 42 years. We also established new and innovative ways to reach and educate the public, having a column in the local Atlantic Highlands Living magazine, hosting our first “Envirossance Faire” and an “Earth Day Walkabout” where visitors walked to various “Green Stops” throughout town.
She explained that with limited resources, “we networked beyond the borough teams and commissions to collaborate with the local arts council, the library, the schools, scouts, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club, and even the Historical Society. With a new organization called “Wild About Atlantic Highlands”, the entire town is a Certified Wildlife Habitat with the National Wildlife Federation. This involved 100 residential and business gardens. “
Ellen added, that “with other programs like “No Mow May”, “Grass – Cut it and Leave It”, “Don’t Spray,” and Leave the Leaves”, we’ve got the public to learn, engage, and commit to being stewards of our beautiful town.”
Lest anyone think she is content with simply garnering the Best Small Town and silver swards, Ellen put the League on notice that “We are now aiming for “Gold Star”, which will set a new precedent for small, historic communities with classic infrastructure. I will leverage this status and other tactics to elevate Atlantic Highlands as a unique entity to preserve this unique ecosystem of mountains to bayside beaches to forested lands in the face of potential overdevelopment.”
Looking towards the future, another of Ellen’s aims is to save and protect the water utility through grants and other support. Municipalities can play a significant role in creating a comprehensive approach to the management of water, she believes. Each municipality in the state has its own water profile, shaped by its geography, infrastructure and local concerns. The gold star in water identifies specific actions and level of performance for municipalities to achieve improvements in water quality, quantity and use.
There are only four municipalities in the state with a gold star: Maplewood Twp, Princeton, Readington Twp, and Woodbridge Twp, which has two Gold Stars.
The Sustainability Champions this year, in addition to Atlantic Highlands, are Madison for populations from 5,000 to 40,000 and Woodbridge for municipalities with more than 40,000 population.
Members of the borough’s Green Team with O’Dwyer are Ashely Cruz, Blake Deakin, Morgan Spicer, Ellen Bollinger, Jim Krauss and Sara Colasurdo, with Councilwoman Hohenleitner the council representative.
Knowing Ellen O’Dwyer, knowing how hard she works once she sets her mind on a goal, and knowing the Green Team’s efforts, it’s a prediction that next year, Atlantic Highlands will be honored with the gold award.
Judging from her energy level and the hard-working GREEN TEAM, together with residents proud of their community, it will not come as any surprise when Atlantic Highlands reaches the gold next year.
