focusing on it and we have guests from the municipality of princeton who have been long involved with the structure and we want to salute them this morning michel you want to introduce our guests it is my great pleasure to introduce  robert g kaiser bob kaiser who is the director of engineering for the town of princeton and our assistant engineer deanna welcome to you both were really really glad to have you here on bea ponder thanks for having us to be here and we always start our show by asking people how did you get into your field which happens to be missable engineering which is actually really a specialty so bob why don't we start with you well i pennsylvania engineering department which is right where lafayette dislocated and then rose to the position of city engineer or prior to applying for the position here with a former principal and when what year was that when you applied for that job  well i worked for eastern for nine years five years as your their city engineer director of public services so that was in one nine hundred eighty three it's now thirty three years later on later and a lot of changes have occurred over those thirty three years and one of the changes is that now you are going to be ending up your engineering career here is that right or going on to something else but here at princeton yes yes i'll be finishing up at the end of end of actually i actually enjoyed doing a lot of design work just as a child and unfortunately i went into college looking to do psychology soon found out that i was probably want to work with designing and trying more plans as a child of different houses things and looking at design magazines and and so it just i reverted back to that i knew that's what i wanted to do once i got into college and  saw what psychology was and so i graduated with a degree from santa clara university of california from california and work for a state deity in washington found out that was not the place for me so that my future husband was finished up with college and back in oregon so i got a job down in oregon and worked with small consulting engineering firm and learned all sorts of the trades i had a great mentor just like bob it was an old and older gentleman who had been running his own firm for forty years working on agricultural projects but also a small communities doing an improvement projects and so that's really where i got the love of working with me this apologies and so when my husband's company relocated us to new jersey i  started looking around for jobs and looked at consultants and then just decided i'd do a cold call to princeton to see if there was anything available resume over knowing that we didn't have a job open yeah we came in and we were so impressed that he was a person in their twenty's who rose to the position of director of engineering anything especially when you are working with infrastructure because everybody has an opinion people get disrupted and bob you've just been masterful at negotiating all the difficult challenges that we ha so i did warn you in advance i'm going to ask you about the highlights and i call them the low lights you were more tactful  pike who was the mayor then came to me the first week i was on the job and said well we have a we have a problem we're hoping that you could solve it and that is our sewers to our play station in the former township when we have heavy so i knew we had some had some challenges and quickly learned that the sewers were over capacity due to the amount of growth that had occurred and also the geology of the of the of the town with employed so i worked with the local plumber to construct a small pub station in the basement a police station so the chief when it was about to rain heavily would go down and the flow into the pump station close the other bow so that the sewerage was sent pumped out under pressure and back at the base movie play station drive but we still had the massive problems with the time range about thirteen million dollars but then we looked at the roads and almost every road needed work except for the newer development routes as well so over the past thirty years or  so past fifteen years deana i've worked together improving roads and you say that the miss a powder is challenging to work for one of the things that we learned early on is that it's good to meetings and we don't do a project without having the neighborhood meeting say this is what we're thinking of doing what the neighbors what do you think you know the neighborhood better than we do  value your opinion so we gather that information in the d n a of the past fifteen years would work together to craft the designs responding to what we heard at the neighborhood meetings and then follow up and hold another neighborhood meeting  with a contractor to let residents know what's planned when it will be occurring who's going to have graduation parties birthday parties or misfits and so forth and try to work that into the in the plane as well so that's been a formula for success it seems to me though that you were also negotiating or having to be diplomatic because so much of that was not just princeton township i mean we're in a regional sewer arrangement with other towns and and also on county roads i mean isn't that a big part of your job it's great to talk to the neighborhood but it must take a lot of other kind of planning and i don't think prince the prince of people necessarily understand how much they're linked to other pieces of the infrastructure project program is that right we have county roadways and we have state roadways and there's quite a bit of an array action with both plus we're also we also participate in the central jersey transportation for where we look at the overall track transportation issues for the region specifically located around route one so it's a great resource actually as well that you can work with your colleagues to find solutions together that complement the entire area rather than than just one group so there's also princeton university to which you do it which from i and i know at least from a planning board standpoint that you have to work with them in terms of making sure that everybody is on the same page with infrastructure so when the university introduces you know a large facility like this are it's the development that's happening and then they have to be new roads and new how does that all work in terms of working together with the university well lots of cordon nation there now and a lot of work behind the scenes doing the doing the planning to make sure that the needs are met as well as the university  needs him and the university has been a good partner working with the technical groups of the planning department me engineering department in trying to strike the right balance because they have their own university and then i guess about twenty years ago they dropped out of the princeton sewer operating committee because in a lab the two municipalities to run the sewer operating committee and all of the sewage from the level i think engineering and public works both work with facilities groups of the university and share services when needed you know when there's snow storms or if some of our equipment isn't working there there's that relationship that you can borrow and reciprocate when the when needed and then we also work on different planning ideas like the university participates and benefits all of us if we get cars off the roadway so they've been a great partner with that as well as engineering take care how does it work with parking and the municipal parking garage after consolidation bob and i both came from the townships now we were much used to more of a suburban area of work and now with the downtown area coming into our purview  it really has opened up our view and let us use more of our skills as well so it's exciting to be able to have an impact in that area so so we've talked about buildings we've talked about roads we've talked about sewage treatment we need you studied to become a civil engineer was that all part of the curriculum of the w the civil engineering this is a very broad field and covers many aspects but what you learn in school is great it gives you a good general background but you learn a lot on the job i was well them for the state how does that fit together i think i mean we get funding typically we get a grant through n j d o t for municipal aid which will stipulate in the range of about three hundred thousand dollars a year and that's a very small part of our typically six million dollar a year capital budget but if you didn't have a there would be an impact  because the differences would have to be made up through tax dollars or we're always trying to find additional funding sources so we're actively pursuing different grant opportunities that are available in the experience same type budgets these days and so we're trying to do our part to find new sources of money but the transportation huge impact statewide talking about state roads county roads bridges and so forth there are so many bridges here in the state that there are deficient if you take a look at the bridge over stony brook route two of six bridge stone arch bridge to be very similar to what it looks like now it means that significant amount of repair work has to be done reconstruction work but all be a stone arch bridge the devil's in the details though in terms of exactly what it  like because it's him in a storage zone and it's on you know on the lincoln highway which is an historic district as well so there's a lot of discussions going on between your own historic preservation commission and the state historic preservation of office so the plan is to rehabilitate that bridge but connected to that bridge is see reinforced concrete floodplain bridge that was constructed one nine hundred twenty one nine hundred thirty and believe it or not the street bridge as well and that's a county bridge so if there are strange changes in the transportation trust fund that also affects the county and their ability to do work what's that on schedule to be it's moving ahead yes the county is looking to replacing that that bridge as well as they have a cold for that is close to where you're metro north metro west so th technical projects coming up right so speaking of noticing things i just noticed the other day and maybe i was asleep at the switch how large this avalon bay development is it's huge and so i guess my question for for you is how does the town handle that influx of population from a from a circulation standpoint how we how we can get across town i mean it can be depending on the time of day can be difficult enough now how do we plan as to how we're going to handle that that level of increased population well a lot of concerns we've we've heard in that regard but when you go back and you take a look at the traffic generation the hosp former hospital generated more traffic than what the avalon bay development generate when you think have the new jersey transit line that goes through there we would be looking with the freebie to monitor what activity is coming up on day to see if there's adjustments of the freebie route schedule needed i have bikeshare coming on board hopefully in the next six months in town and i worry as much while i don't worry about the cars because i had heard about the fact that the the generation of traffic is very different probably more concentrated in the morning in the night than it might have been with the hospital when you had different shifts i'm concerned about walkability i think a lot of people will be moving into that place because they can walk to town or walk somewhere else and right by and it seems to me that if you look at all of the infrastructure on when there's been street probably the sidewalks are the worst but i mean even if you think of the intersection between witherspoon and the hamilton way his and so on when you think about the library in the arts council and then the restaurants on the other side of the street the probably the pedestrian traffic in that area has changed more than the vehicular traffic and all the things that the bike path people on bad there hasn't been a lot of forward movement from those studies and i mean bob and i have that witherspoon street on our plans and early two thousand and so to certain point i think we'll be working with council to say it's time to move the had we need to address this is one of our major gateways and the central business district plus it's like you said it's a very active pedestrian lane whereas we need to focus on it now i think it's interesting how much more development has been taking place and affect the former borough and the fringe of the township that just generates a different expectation of what traffic will be like there with bikes and walking and also car movement i was surprised that the community hasn't seen any analysis of what the society of professional engineers in in the state of new jersey and on several occasions particularly when i was certainly when i was mayor bob was engineer of the year like well he was like the yankee going boy   and actually we have been so good so blessed to have you through building a new man this support building through navigating through consolidation through all the the challenges that we had when we were the borough and the township and trying trying to negotiate that in building pedestrian bridge is you know when dealing with truck traffic on two zero six i mean and that's just in my short time i township committee and then i remember bob was just absolutely you know my right hand and just had a tremendous leader not only in princeton but in the state of new jersey and and i just want to thank you because you just been amazing and made such amazing contributions to the town for our viewers one of the things that we like to focus on is that there are such good people competent people energetic people dedicated people who are working for us and in government excellence in our engineering department is going to continue under your leadership and we thank you for taking it on and doing it so i just like to come as a person and search your wonderful community starting with the elected officials who looked officials have been do the best job we can that it's a wonderful combination so thank you so much for nobody really knows about it except some few people like louise so i'd like to turn to louise wilson who is director of the green of the south green infrastructure project at new jersey future believes you've done a number of things that have led into this job can you tell us how how this journey took place i served in elected office in montgomery township for ten years i was on the township  into that role unexpected not part of my life plan had been very interested in land use planning issues i have was working at rutgers at the  agricultural experiment station and cook college and there were faculty there doing research on the urban rural fringe planning issues and i watched that play out around me in montgomery with farm fields going under houses and whatnot so that's what that's that's why initially was getting involved in politics and running for local office and in office i found  that i i was i remained as interested in out as ever and planning and open space and environmental matters and trying to to grow in a responsible way and had all of that but but sort of was surprised too at the fascination i developed for infrastructure because these are linked yeah very very much so was my last year in office i had i wasn't working for some time but when i was approached by new jersey future about this job related to green infrastructure i saw again that very strong connection between environmental stewardship water which is our most precious resource as a planet  d infrastructure green infrastructure is these practices that while broadly speaking it's ways to get rain water storm water and snow melt back into the ground instead of into pipes and into the nearest surface water and so green infrastructure is about capturing rainwater on site if at all possible with rain gardens and vegetated soils and tree pits and all these kinds of things that actually make for a beautiful streetscape and so serve societal and economic objectives as well as storm water management objectives and in the course of my years in office serving on the planning board on my master plan committee to my getting to know decision makers a lot of different levels i was also active with league municipalities so and how about sustainable new jersey and sustainable jersey yeah that is a very important if you're one of the not through the mayor's committee for a green future or so and my grammar he was one of the first towns with that certification sustainable jersey certification and i helped shepherd or manage the transition from program to nonprofit status for that organization so so yes that was another great i guess platform from which or where i met platforms wrong word but where i met people who i now interact with in this role with new jersey future so decision makers at local levels insight into how  different groups and sets of interests have a role to play when a town is siding or a city how it's going to manage its stormwater believe so so that's why this particular role was interesting to me because it did give me an opportunity i'm not a content expert on green infrastructure engineering and practices and all but but i have seen how powerful a tool it is when when you are place making and planning for what you want a neighborhood to look like we're to evolve into and what a powerful tool it is either by itself or in tandem with great infrastructure pipes to manage  storm water which is becoming an increasing problem nuisance flooding we have with with climate change we have more frequent heavy storm events coming right after a but we also ironically have longer drive spells so when a rain you know heavy rain a couple of inches and a couple hours comes after a long dry spell everything doesn't soak in well there's a lot of runoff and a lot of nuisance flooding and so it has become more of an issue for towns of of all sizes so with as we talk about towns of all sizes and and not knowing very much about this it and actually a very important tool for cities as well and we for example complete streets that consist complete streets thought process and framework is is about making sure that there's room for cars and pedestrians and bikes and and what we're hoping is to well complete streets because of the way they tend to be constructed and designed provide lots of opportunities for permeable pavement and for pavers and for vegetated swales and bump outs and tree pits and these kinds of things that can absorb actually up above a curb and and sort of separated from water sources but the street tree if a street is designed or retrofitted with street trees that sit in and effect  huge boxes ok receptacles or it could even be a great big trench all the way down the street it's saying it's enclosed  there's lots of room for root growth and what not there may be at the very core there maybe some somewhere along there or a pipe so that when there's just when you have a epic storm with six inches of rain in twenty four hours you still have the ability for overflow to go into a pipe but it's it is street trees but it's street trees where your where your water coming along the street is going into a pit where roots are instead of going into the storm sewer with the pipe ok so it still runs off the street it runs into something that looks like a storm sewer but it's but it's going from there into either a large box in effect sometimes it has a bottom and sometimes it doesn't sometimes or it's just go out the bottom or into a long large trench that supports trees and also other you know shrubs and perennials and the kinds of things that you see in a rain garden when michele brought up the city's parking lots and cities must be a terrible source of runoff i've never seen except in sort of fancy shopping centers i've never seen trees in urban parking lots and all of that water goes into the same pipe that the two which goes to so that you in some cities have combined sewer systems a storm sewers and the which the first designed simply to carry and manage storm water are connected with the sanitary sewer systems in some places then there are twenty one cities in  new jersey that have combined sewer systems and therefore the problem of combined sewer overflow frightening action with a the older cities they tend to be and many of those systems are you know hundred  twenty years old so they too have problems with i and i infiltration and and again green infrastructure can help to absorb water before it causes overflows and get a bill and it gets treated and you hope it works well on them safe water which i guess we're sort of questioning these days but all of those office buildings and landholders and developers that have parking lots their stuff goes into the same system but they never pay you know and and if you have to fix something shouldn't everybody pay is that part of green infrastructure or not well it's not i guess it's part of the mix you know when  my particular program i'm with the towns that i'm working with are the roughly speaking the pinelands area or the highlands area but there are others at new jersey future working very intensively and the rest of the state and i try to work in the rest of the city when i'm working with developers in the developer my point in making that distinction is that i know from the work that my colleagues are doing with jersey water works and and from just studying this overall issue that there are other states and cities around the country that do have stormwater feats and even storm water utilities and it's a way to you know collect dollars from people who are from landowners who who own vast impervious surface dentists and who are then responsible for a gigantic amount of storm water but they never they don't pay at all for that storm water to be treated so there are no cities now in new jersey that have storm water fees but  i think it's likely that some i believe that newark is talking about it and i'd be surprised that you know down the road would be surprised if it's more literally so a suburban problem i mean when you see the amount of the pervious covered i mean anybody who goes to quaker bridge mall knows that only about a third of the parking spaces the the paved over stuff is is during the holidays so right so put for eleven months out of the year and it's not you know i think the reason it's becoming a bigger issue in the cities particularly those with combined sewer systems is that they know they must prepare the collect dollars from people that are contributing a lot to the problem or who is just by virtue of those who have the property they own and how impervious that is so it may ultimately become more cost of increasingly cost effective i should say because green infrastructure is often less expensive to build and less expensive to maintain but it depends on which practice you're talking about but it will become increasingly economical and financially beneficial to use green infrastructure to just absorb as much of that water on site and have it infiltrate into the into the ground and and and be cleaned that way to me that's part of the beauty of it's not just about getting water in the ground it's about getting it into the ground clean and when water runs along the road or runs the sidewalk it picks up all kinds of contaminants that then end up and and rivers and lakes and reservoirs that are our drinking water sources so but just the green also be a subsurface that where the water you know really can percolate through and infiltrate and the tree pits and soils that i was talking about earlier and but also  anything that captures water prevents it from going into pipes and in the case of cisterns enables you to reuse it for irrigation for flushing toilets  if you want to engineer that way so that's another way that it can be can become economically beneficial if somebody is paying high water rates but two questions for you and one may be irrelevant but i've always had this question one is what it how are you know all over the united states there water towers was that for the purpose of capturing water or do you know why i think water towers  you're pressure you know the minute that's that's why i don't think the water towers are there to collect water and think they're just purely storage oh i can think they are there i think you know i think that's right but there's no reason why they couldn't collect water either you know that's absolutely true and then last fall was in tanzania for a month at a local school and there's huge water issues in this part of  we need to probably start thinking about this our water when we're comes from and what we're doing and what we're not doing absolutely and again this is this more under the jersey water works initiative than than my particular green infrastructure project but but yes the just the awareness and having people think about where that water is coming from when it comes out the pipe and having some confidence that what they're getting is is clean and also understanding that even though all of the treatment that happens with the private or public water utility that is the water you know that's responsible for delivering that water the pipes that are between the road and your think or your tub are yours and those could be you know that that new jersey american water or whoever is not responsible for making sure those are not lead pipes is not corroded or otherwise  and i have to agree with people who who have said this is it is can't be i mean flint is an extreme and horrifying example of so many things gone wrong  but there are many other places where water supply is and the water that actually being consumed is just not the quality that anybody in a civilized country should should expect and of course that we all have another question about policy and that is how it was d o t d thinking about green infrastructure  i give you one specific example i think the d o t was very involved in rebuilding route thirty two or thirty five that goes all long in long beach island that got washed  own that it seems to me it would have been ideal great green infrastructure project since you were starting from scratch and you know it's going to flood again i mean there's no doubt that so do they have swales that they plant trees that can live in an ocean environment or was it just paved over again like we've been always been building for some astronomical cost you know i do not know it's a great and powerful thing but that is not the general culture yet at d o t my colleague and i have done a couple of presentations before go and also we have presented to county engineers just to say we're not engineers we're not telling you you know how to engineer that but here's here's how this this set of tools works here's how you here's what you need to think about when you're designing with it if you  have storm water issues this is this is something you've got to be thinking about and increasingly we and those audience have mostly been receptive but as far as the our our ultimate i would call it ultimate but we do have we hope very much to interest to d o t and move you know move the needle turn the queen mary whatever you want such that the complete streets thinking it is expanded to include green infrastructure that you should be thinking about storm water even as you're thinking about getting people from one place to another and you know that work continues that it's not it's and it's not done and there are if if there were to transportation trust fund is replenished in a real way and more dollars flow and if there were incentives built into those programs such that if green infrastructure or storm or green storm water management were incorporated industry would give you an extra give you points toward getting your project approved then you would see that you know that the just that incentive would be very very powerful and i hope it happens i mean it really really needs to happen and  there's more and more pressure on another part of the program in addition to working directly with towns in the mainstreaming green infrastructure program we're working with developers and their design professionals because we know that towns can take the lead on requiring green infrastructure or incentivizing it but if the developers don't see it i don't see it's competitive true it definitely is true and another thing that can happen if you have storm water is managed sort of lot by lot with swales and rain gardens which can be done really really well you know some easily to it is not rocket science but this is a really isn't and so if you do that well and if and if municipal ordinances allow you might actually get an extra and you have a lot of them around town and they're all engineered the same way when one and you have a huge storm well when that first one overflows that's pretty much what all the other ones also still end up when you massive storm event with very bad downstream flooding and you never do get that water that just at least in those types of detention basins that are bowed every we can ha concrete channels the waters doesn't get back into the ground then as as community as water users as you know people who love our planet we