Local News...

Issue 18 — Thursday, December 5, 2013
DCNR Acquires
486-Acre Tract For
Addition To
Delaware State Forest

Harrisburg − Department of Conservation and Natural Resources officials today hailed acquisition of the 486-acre former Rock Hill Scout Camp in Pike County that will boost size of the Delaware State Forest to more than 85,000 acres.

“Although bordered on two sides by Delaware State Forest, these lands are feeling the mounting pressure of surrounding development and increased use,” DCNR Acting Secretary Ellen Ferretti said. “This addition will protect criticial habitat and the watershed, and provide more opportunities for the public to enjoy the outdoors.”

The property was used as a boy scout camp from the 1950s until the 1990s. The camp is off Route 739 about five miles southeast of Lords Valley in Dingman Township, Pike County. It contains an 18-acre natural lake with a small portion of shoreline cleared for swimming and canoeing. The state invested $1.2 million in Keystone funding through DCNR’s Community Conservation Partnerships Program to purchase the land. Pike County facilitated the purchase.

DCNR intends to remove many buildings and other camp infrastructure to return to a natural forest landscape. Delaware State Forest, along with the neighboring Lackawanna State Forest and its 32,000 acres, are keystones in the Pocono Forests and Waters Conservation Landscape Initiative (CLI), one of seven major land protection efforts underway across the state. Regional in scope, CLIs partner local governments, conservancies and residents with the DCNR and other state departments in long-term planning and implementation that promotes sustainability, conservation, community revitalization and recreational projects.

“This acquisition is consistent with the Bureau of Forestry’s priority to add lands that are adjacent to existing state forests, and also with the goal of the regional CLI approach to increase the public and private land base under conservation in the Poconos,” Ferretti said.

For information on the Delaware State Forest District, or any of Pennsylvania’s 20 state forest districts, go to www.dcnr.state.pa.us; for details on the Pocono Forest and Waters and other conservation initiatives, visit www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cli.

 
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‘Small Business Saturday’ Catches On Locally
By Ken Baumel

MILFORD — Local retailers are fully aware of American Express’ Small Business Saturday that kicked off Nov. 30 that is part of the national credit-card company’s Shop Small campaign geared to get shoppers to explore local stores and buy gifts locally. The campaign is geared to keep buyers focused during the buying frenzy that starts Thanksgiving Day.

In the past, most of the effort to get people to buy gifts in the holiday season that ends Christmas week started on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday promotion was not an American Express exclusive.

The success of Black Friday later spawned Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving as a day when on-line retailers offered special discounts. Last year, Amex launched Small Business Saturday. So, is the message of the national shop-local campaign working? In Milford Borough, Amy Eisenberg of the Craft Show, a gift shop on East Harford Street, found that last Saturday was a particularly strong day for her store.

The difficulty for retailers, such as Eisenberg, who aggressively advertises, is to attribute where shoppers come from. Do they come from store ads, some other advertising that draws people locally, or the national Amex awareness campaign? Still, Eisenberg said, “I think Small Business Saturday is working. We had the best [Saturday after Thanksgiving] results in 20 years. It’s hard to attribute where people find out about us.

“We do have a loyal following. We have 50,000 guests come to our shop a year. So, I think we help other retailers. One interesting new trend is that we find more people asking to buy American products this year than in the past. We like to make donations to local not-for-profits, charities, churches, community service groups. When we do well, it gives us more of an opportunity to give back to the community.”

Patina owner Fran Wood’s gift, furnishing, décor, and design store is on Broad Street. She too said that she has a loyal following. She said, “It was an excellent weekend. It met our highest expectations. We carry items from $4.50 [New England hand-dipped beeswax candles] to furniture worth thousands. One person from Honesdale bought a $2,000 piece of furniture on Saturday. I love it when whole families come to the store to shop. We’ve been here for 30 years. People like the personal service the smaller shops can give. We’re affordable. We do decorative gift wrapping, we add a gift card, and we ship United Parcel Service (UPS).”

Wood continues to do things the old-fashioned way, which is one on one customer interface. Others, such as Eisenberg use www.facebook.com for couponing and other promotional tools to bring people to town... for complete story, get this week's issue.

Blooming Grove Gets Tough On Sewage Violations
By Lisa Mickles

LORDS VALLEY — Blooming Grove Township Board of Supervisors are fed up with ongoing sewage violations stemming from the Village Plaza and have initiated legal proceedings against the owners of the strip mall.

At Monday night’s meeting, Chairman Randy Schmalzle said that township solicitor Shelli Whitmer has been unsuccessful in contacting the attorney for the property owners of the strip mall located off Route 739 that contains the Weis Supermarket and other businesses.

He said the township’s Sewage Enforcement Officer has visited the site recently and has found that there are still numerous areas of surface discharge seeping from the two sand mounds that handle sewage discharge from the shopping center.

In October, Engineer Sara Bue-Morris sought additional time to finalize plans for the sewage upgrade project for the strip mall and admitted that there was a problem with the septic fields since they continuously get clogged from grease and flour stemming from the businesses located in the strip mall.

She had said that in order to alleviate the problem, it would require that the wastewater be treated prior to its release to the septic mounds, which would require new engineering plans and approval by the Pa Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to complete the work.

Since that meeting, the supervisors have not heard back from anyone and have since filed charges with the district magistrate’s office, which could cost the property owners a $300 fine per day. Currently, the septic mounds are pumped out every other week but the supervisors say that is not enough.

Schmalzle had warned Morris that if the project was not moved on expeditiously, the township would seek daily pumping until the problem could be fixed.

This solution was also given to McDonald’s since they too were having sewage issues several years ago. The fast-food restaurant complied with having the septic tanks pumped daily and have since corrected their sewage system problems.

“This has been going on way too long and it needs to be fixed,” said Schmalzle... for complete story, get this week's issue.

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