DOYLESTOWN BOROUGH, PA — A major downtown street will be repaved under a resurfacing contract awarded this week by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT).

Borough officials, who have lobbied for years to have East and West State Street resurfaced, announced the news on Wednesday via its Facebook page.

When the project happens later this year, the work will be fully paid for under a major $8.3 million project bid award by PennDOT to repave 16 miles of state highways in Bucks County.

This marks the first time that State Street will be resurfaced since the 1990s, said borough officials, who credited an organized lobbying effort by local leadership and the community for pushing the project forward.

In its Facebook posting, the borough thanked State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, State Rep. Tim Brennan, Borough Council, Mayor Noni West, residents and business owners who brought the street’s condition to PennDOT’s attention.

State Street runs through the heart of the borough and serves as a heavily used business, tourism, and residential corridor for the town. It is home to the County Theater, a popular local and regional tourist attraction, the historic Doylestown Inn, and many other businesses.

More detailed timing and work plans are expected once the state finalizes its construction schedule.

A rising tide of beach garbage plagues local wildlife. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it.

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size: slide_obj.count, // pages size
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});
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gtx_gallery_thumbs_set_backwards()
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gtx_gallery_paginated_thumbs_lazy(slide_obj);

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try{
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}

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flexSlider.flexAnimate(slide – 1, true);
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gtx_track_slide( )
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function debounce(func, wait, immediate) {
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var later = function() {
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function changeURL(pic){
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path = basepath + “pic/”+pic+”/”;

title = “Pic “+pic;
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window.dataLayer.push({
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jQuery(“#gtx-gallery-slider-310554”).flexslider({
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pauseOnHover: true,
prevText: “”,
nextText: “”,
slideshow: false,
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before: gtx_gallery_slide_before,
after: gtx_gallery_slide_after
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The litter accumulates from trash left on the shoreline, refuse that blows in from cars, bins and local roadways, and garbage that travels to the ocean by way of rivers. Waves then break down the plastics into smaller pieces of micro- and nanoplastics.

“Plastic pollution is incredibly dangerous to aquatic species,” she says. Fish and other animals ingest the microplastics and can become entangled in ribbons, nets and fishing lines. Other items that entangle wildlife include six-pack ring holders, hair ties, fishing line, netting or pieces of netting, fishing lures, hooks and plastic bags.

Sea birds are especially vulnerable because they use those bits of fishing line, rope, string and other materials to build their nests. Balloons, in particular, are deadly to seabirds, which often mistake them for jellyfish or other prey.

“Plastics are now in every ecosystem, almost every seabird, and almost every human body,” Mateleska says, with the long-term health impacts unknown.

They also take an extremely long time to break down, which is harmful to the state’s delicate coastal ecosystem.

“[Plastic] material that is in the environment may present itself on a shoreline very far away many years or decades later,” says Dave McLaughlin, sustainability coordinator at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

___________________________

What You Can Do

Beach walkers can help by picking up garbage wherever they go to enjoy the outdoors. But you don’t have to go to the beach to help. Better management of beach trash starts at home, Mataleska says.

“Refuse single-use plastics and look for sustainable alternatives, pick up trash wherever and whenever you see it, and support legislation that stops plastic at the source,” she advises.

Volunteer for coastal cleanups, use reusable materials, carry in and carry out your trash, recycle, and don’t litter. And consider joining a nonprofit group such as those sponsored by Coastodians (coastodians.org) or Save the Bay (savebay.org) that organize beach cleanups. When it comes to beach trash, even small groups can make a big difference.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

A long-awaited housing development that could bring hundreds of new apartments to a series of empty lots in Burlington’s South End neighborhood is beginning to come together.

The first phase of the major public-private deal, called the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, got official sign-off from the Burlington City Council last month. The project’s backers have also scored key funding commitments from Treasurer Mike Pieciak’s office and state housing funding agencies. 

The project on Lakeside Avenue is the beginning of “a neighborhood being born out of a big parking lot,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak told city councilors in May.

City officials and developers hope the project could eventually include over a thousand homes, making it one of the largest developments in Vermont – and putting a considerable dent in the Queen City’s housing shortage. Regional planners estimate that Burlington needs to add between 3,500 and 10,500 homes by 2050 to get the housing market to a healthy state. 

The development is possible, in part, because of a 2023 zoning change in the formerly industrial area that allows for some of the densest housing development in the state, according to local planners. 

A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture.

The South End project’s backers include Champlain College, Champlain Housing Trust and Ride Your Bike LLC, the investors behind the nearby Hula coworking campus. They have brought on Jonathan Rose Companies, an affordable housing developer with projects from New York to California, as the lead developer. The South End project is the company’s first in Vermont.

The development agreement signed by city councilors in May greenlights the South End project’s first 204 units, estimated to cost roughly $100 million. 

Per Burlington’s inclusionary zoning policy and state rules, at least 20% of the first round of apartments will be set aside as affordable. But the developers hope to secure enough funding to allow them to earmark a third of the 204 apartments with income restrictions, said Andrew Foley, director of development at Jonathan Rose Companies, in an interview. The development agreement offers the developers reduced city fees if the affordable units are priced even more modestly than required.

The lion’s share of the new apartments will be studios and one-bedrooms, Foley said. The building would include common social spaces for neighbors to gather, he added.  

Like any large-scale housing project, the developers of the South End apartments are piecing together financing from a wide array of sources. They recently scored an $8 million low-interest loan from Pieciak’s 10% for Vermont program, along with a $6.7 million award from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to support 67 affordable apartments – including 10 reserved for people experiencing homelessness. 

To build out new roads – along with wastewater connections and stormwater infrastructure meant to cut down on sewer overflows into nearby Lake Champlain – city officials are going after funding from a new state program. The Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, a tax-increment financing tool created by the Legislature last year, would allow the city and the developers to borrow the funds needed to build out the infrastructure against the development’s future property tax revenue.