St. Martin, topic at Env. Comm.
Page 4 • Wednesday, September 17, 2014 • The Hammonton Gazette
COMMISSION, from Page 1
that were addressed during the meeting.
Public Works Manager/Business Administrator Jerome Barberio, along with Community Forestry Management intern
Vincent Calderone made a presentation regarding the Community Forestry Management Plan survey the town conducted
during the summer. Calderone, a student at
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey,
evaluated and surveyed trees throughout the
town, and the project is about 80 percent
completed.
The core area of surveyed trees took approximately eight weeks to conduct. The
surveyed trees stood on any heavy populated, narrow streets and pedestrian areas.
Town hall on Central Avenue was the beginning point of the survey, according to
Barberio. He discussed the specifics of
what they were analyzing with each tree.
“To date, we have 64 streets completed
and Vincent [Calderone] did 49 of those.
We have 24 streets remaining in the core.
There have been 1,370 trees that have been
surveyed. We have 350 more trees that we
have to do. We are looking for any hazards.
That is what we wanted to identify, and we
were able to do so,” Barberio said.
Barberio and Calderone evaluated the
trees using a rating system, grading each
category one through three. The categories
for analyzing were structure, general health,
placement, immediate hazard and risk assessment. One of the things that needed to
be determined in this survey was if
the trees posed a threat to fall on a
structure.
During the eight-week survey
process, 30 trees were identified as
hazardous and 10 others were
deemed close to a structure. Barberio wanted to determine how to put
the data that was collected onto a
software called iTree.
“We can try to upload this data
we have collected, so we can get it
laid out. iTree is free to the public.
We have to register and we are a
municipality, so we won’t have a
problem with it. The iTree program
has needs. It needs to be worked
on. The data needs to be imputed.
Basically, at some point, we need to
look at how we are going to implement this process. It could be partially the responsibility of the intern
next year, or any other idea the
board has here. We need to t