Mayor forms conservation club

Newhard wants to tap into community’s environmental awareness Warwick — Mayor Michael Newhard has lived in Warwick most of his life. He has seen the many changes that have come, with population and with nature. After last year’s study on the Wawayanda walkway that defined the village’s green belt and showed the prevalence of wildlife in our backyard, along with the village taking ownership of the Lewis Woodlands and the 12 acres it received from Leyland, he thought this would be an ideal time to start a conservation club. Newhard will hold the first meeting of the club this month, tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning, Sept. 16, at 9 a.m. He is partnering with Trustee Eileen Patterson. “We are reaching out to our community for help with this,” said Newhard. “The Warwick Garden Club is interested. Ed Satler (a Warwick High School teacher) is interested. We went to tap in to the professors with environmental backgrounds who live here.” The club also will connect with Interact and the Environmental Club, groups from the high school. It is open to young adults all the way up through senior citizens. “There are projects we can do to enhance those places,” said Newhard, referring to the open spaces in the village. “We will bring speakers in to explain things that are important to our environment like our watershed, things we take for granted.” One of the main focuses, Newhard said, will be water. “We are surrounded by this incredible open space,” he said. “This remarkable stream comes right through the village. It changes from a more natural environment to a built-out environment. Let’s look at what type of life is in that stream. It will be interesting to know the connectiveness of the stream and what it does. It is so efficient. We see it rise up 15 minutes after a rainfall and then descend. But we are looking at it from over a bridge downtown. This idea is to let people see where it comes from and where it goes.” But it is not just water. Newhard wants people to see the beauty of the area. Recently, he was in Veteran’s Memorial Park showing someone around the village. There were a tremendous number of bluebirds in the park and they were beautiful, he said. He remembered the project Warwick In Bloom did some time back, putting bluebird houses in the park. “Projects will come out of the club itself,” he said. “It may be as simple as signage.” He found his example for the effort in New Jersey, where storm water grates have an imprint saying that the water that goes into these grates ends up in the stream system. “It makes people more aware of what they are putting into the system,” Newhard said. The Environmental Club wanted to stencil a fish onto the grates in Warwick a while ago, he said. It would be a good project for them and the Conservation Club to do together. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Newhard said there was a piece in The Warwick Dispatch’s Looking Back section last week on a Youth Conservation Group in 1981 working on a project in Orange County Park. “I think the time is right for a new conservation club,” said Newhard. Anyone wishing to participate should call the Village Hall at 986-2031.