Most local Meadowlands Matters material tends toward the “blacktop and parking lot” part of the region, but there’s an environmental side, too.
Colleagues Linda Moss and Scott Fallon have that angle covered in today’s story in The Record:
“The state laboratory that conducts scientific research in the Meadowlands will be taken over by Rutgers-Newark, a move approved Thursday that many say will secure the future of a group of scientists who have worked to restore the region’s ecology.
The fate of the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute had been in question ever since a controversial new law was rushed through the Legislature and signed by Governor Christie this year. The law called for the institute to be jettisoned from state government and become a non-profit. Several scientists and environmentalists had feared that the institute, known as MERI, would be forced to downsize or even fold if it had to raise funds completely on its own.
That won’t happen after the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority adopted a resolution Thursday that puts the institute under the control of Rutgers-Newark’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.”
There was another matter handled at the meeting that all three of us attended in Lyndhurst:
“At its meeting Thursday, the sports authority also unveiled a second partnership with a higher-education institution, passing a resolution for Bergen Community College to take over operation of the William D. McDowell Observatory, which is also at DeKorte Park. The observatory, open since 2008, has averaged about 3,000 visitors a year.
The college’s faculty will lead the observatory’s public-viewing nights, which have been on hold since January. Evening viewings will resume Aug. 5 from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m., and continue every Wednesday.”
