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Well, well, well: rain gardens growing in popularity By SUe FerrArA
Steinert wrestlers Ella Johnson, Dana Volb, Isabella Panfili and Rowan Lacy-Cancel at the Mercer County Tournament, where Johnson, Volb and Lacy-Cancel finished as champions of their weight class.
MCT champion wrestlers make Hamilton history By Rich Fisher
Area sports history was made on Jan. 28, and several girls from Steinert and Hamilton West were central figures on the big stage. On that day, the first Mercer County Girls Wrestling Tournament was held at Robbinsville High School, and five competitors from the township schools walked away with gold medals, while five others earned Top-3 medals and
one was Top-5. It’s a sign of the times for high school sports. “When I started coaching, this wasn’t really on my radar, and now I get pure joy out of watching the girls compete and wrestle,” Hamilton coach Gerard Belviso said. “We’ve got a lot of tough girls. I really thought if we could have filled a couple more weight classes, we could have come out of there with the team title (won by Trenton). We’re at a really good
place right now as far as our girls team.” Steinert coach Joe Panfili was in complete agreement. “It’s freaking awesome,” he said. “These girls go at it. It’s something to see.” And just how did it get to this level in Mercer? “I think it’s just becoming more mainstream,” Panfili said. “They see it on TV now. A lot of the girls matches are as intriguing and as competitive See WRESTLING, Page 14
You have no family history of colon cancer. You still need a colon cancer screening.
Let’s talk about H2O, aka water. In 1746, Benjamin Franklin observed, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.” Today, Franklin might consider amending that to read: When the well is dry, we know the worth of clean water. Assuring clean water for daily use in our community means intelligently managing not only usage, but runoff of water back into the watershed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines a watershed as the “land area that channels rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, and rivers, and eventually to outflow points such as reservoirs, bays, and the ocean.” And New Jersey connects to all those kinds of water resources. One form of water runoff management is a rain garden. In essence, the rain garden, when properly planted, sends water back into the ground for natural purification and the refilling of the groundwater tables—the very groundwater which fills the wells Franklin referenced in 1746. Up until 2004, little attention was paid to water runoff
from properties when people “paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” as Joni Mitchell crooned. Creation of impervious structures–patios, driveways, tennis courts, reduced the amount of open land to soak up water to send it back into the ground. Consequently, anything landing on these impervious surfaces–road salt, chemicals, animal waste, flowed directly into the storm systems and out into the waterways. *** In 2004, new water management rules were established in Chapter 7A of New Jersey law requiring better water management systems to be connected to development. That change led to the writing of a 572-page analysis report from the Department of Environmental Protection. The report noted that within New Jersey, “there are 7,840 miles of rivers and streams including 6,330 miles of nontidal rivers and 1,510 miles of tidal rivers; 69,825 acres of lakes and ponds larger than 2 acres;1,069 square miles of estuarine and ocean waters; and 1,482 square miles of fresh and saline marshes and wetlands.” In an interview, Rutgers See RAIN, Page 16
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