RIVER VALE, N.J.—On the evening of Monday, Feb. 12, Burton Hall, past president of the River Vale Neighborhood Association (RVNA), will donate to the River Vale Public Library his personal archive detailing the RVNA’s successful effort to preserve and protect the watershed forest abutting Lake Tappan Reservoir.
Says Hall, “These materials chronicle an extraordinary decade-long effort to prevent the destruction of the watershed forest that protects the Lake Tappan Reservoir.”
In the 1990s, that effort raised over $5 million in funding to support the purchase of the land. Today that tract is the Poplar Road Wildlife Sanctuary.
Hall’s donation includes over 1,000 individually protected pages of documents. Among this is correspondence with elected local, county, state and federal officials including three governors, conservation foundations, state agencies, Green Acres, and the Council on Affordable Housing; funding applications; newspaper articles; meeting minutes; issues of the RVNA’s published newspaper, “The River Vale Vision”; and detailed coverage of the 1998 open space ballot issue championed by the RVNA. Also included are digitized copies of television interviews, photography and items used in promoting the cause, from T-shirts and buttons to mailers.
Hall says, “Entrusting these materials to the River Vale Library ensures that there will always be a record of this significant community achievement.”
In October of 1996 Hall was part of a large gathering of River Vale residents attending a River Vale Planning Board meeting. The large turnout was in response to a public notice announcing a developer’s proposal to clear-cut a large expanse of watershed forest to make way for a massive high-density housing development consisting of 280 townhomes.
In describing the threatened tract of watershed forest, the Audubon Society had stated, “This is probably the single most important site on the upper river in New Jersey. Its clean air and clean water contribution is irreplaceable in Bergen County. As the biggest and best piece of forest on the [Hackensack] River…it should remain without alteration to protect the river.”
The lands in question consisted of approximately 38 acres surrounded by another roughly 44 acres of environmentally sensitive wetlands.
In the fall of 1996, conventional wisdom held that the destruction of this large expanse of environmentally sensitive watershed forest was a fait accompli.
Powerful forces intent on clear-cutting the land for development were arrayed with the forest in their crosshairs. United Water, United Properties (a water company real estate subsidiary) and interested developers were ready to make short work of the review process.
“Standing in the way of this destructive juggernaut was a small but dedicated band of River Vale citizens determined to protect this irreplaceable natural asset,” Hall said.
The next six years would see a grassroots effort to preserve and protect this tract of land. That effort would culminate in September 2002 with the preservation of the majority of the threatened watershed forest habitat and the creation of the Poplar Road Wildlife Sanctuary.
In 2007 “Money” magazine named River Vale one of the top 30 towns in America due in part to 8,000 acres of parkland and open space, part of it bordering Lake Tappan Reservoir.