AUGUST 21, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Village should give more attention to King’s Pond Park
To the Editor:
It was reported last week that two truckloads of construction debris were dumped in the rear of the village’s composting site at the end of Lakeview Drive sometime in the prior two months. The village manager’s response is that the police are attempting to track down culprit. This effort seems like a worthy effort. However, the result of this dumping, although wrong, is inconsequential as it is not visible from any walk paths, does not impede access to anything and actually blends into the landscape of that area.
How the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection was able to discover and react to this violation is to be applauded. However, the DEP and the village administration have failed to recognize the very visible dumping by Mother Nature on King’s Pond Park, the largest wildscape in Ridgewood. Here, we have a dangerous, partially collapsed dam, a pond full of debris, and a shoreline overgrown with vegetation that denies access. All of this is in plain view but remains ignored. It is a disgrace that this wildscape has been allowed to deteriorate without any action by current or previous village mangers or the DEP. After 15 years of neglect, the current village budget is devoid of any funding to address this situation.
From my standpoint, if you want to clean up a mess, let’s put our efforts into restoring a popular fishing area in a very visible park setting to its intended use. The village’s 2006 master plan showed, in detail, how that could be accomplished. It’s way past the time when it should be implemented.
George W. Shabet
Ridgewood
