Kathleen Doran-Norton, member of the Bridgewater Township Board of Supervisors, forwarded the email below and photo (above) to me yesterday.  She didn’t say so but I’m guessing she’s got Thursday’s Business and Industrial Park planning open house in mind since Spring Brook/Rice Creek flows through the southern edge of the “south site” on West Armstrong Rd. in Bridgewater Township.  Kathleen wrote:

FYI…why protecting our community’s "green space" is important.

Brook trout only live in those streams without warm water run-off from development, and in those waters which are very clean.

——
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010
Subject: A Spring Brook treasure
From: Stephanie Schmidt

A group of students and I went out sampling for brook trout on Saturday, kicking off an assessment of the current population.  Attached is a photo of one of our better finds… a 10.5 inch brookie, the largest of the day (I will reveal its location for a small price… maybe).  It was a beautiful day to sample a beautiful fish.

Stephanie N. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Saint Olaf College
Department of Environmental Studies & Biology

When I first blogged about the proposed park last July (it was then generally referred to as the West Armstrong Business Park), I wrote that the proposed business park “is likely to be controversial because of the current (1999) annexation agreement between the township and Northfield, as well as the park’s location between Heath Creek and Spring Brook (Rice) Creek.” The post generated over 100 comments. I included these maps in the post:

Here’s a Google map of the area, with a few of my markers. View West Armstrong Business Park (proposed) in a larger map.

  
Here are a couple of Heath Creek and Spring Brook Creek watershed maps from an (old) page on the Carleton web site titled Environmental Aspects of Transportation Planning in Northfield.