Salisbury Township has been asked to participate in the Green Corridor Project.

John Rogers, an environmental consultant, made a PowerPoint presentation to the township Environmental Advisory Council at the Aug. 19 meeting, utilizing the township municipal building meeting room’s audio visual system for this purpose for the first time.

“We’ve done this in five other counties,” Rogers claimed of the project, saying he’s made similar presentations to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and to Berks, Monroe and Cumberland county officials.

Rogers presented a case for environmental preservation based on economic factors.

“We don’t have a good handle on it [environmental preservation] because we don’t know what the environment is worth,” Rogers said.

Rogers said Salisbury and the Lehigh Valley region is perfectly positioned to participate in the Green Corridor Project because of the location of the Kittatinny Ridge, a portion of which includes South Mountain, Lehigh Mountain and Blue Mountain.

According to Rogers, developers and environmentalists often face off against each other.

“The environment is seen as an impediment,” he said.

He said that there’s a “value of nature,” and that there’s an investment “Return On the Environment (Rogers emphasized, “Land use planning is our highest-value Best Management Practice (BMP).”

He said it may take a younger generation to implement ROE as a BMP.

“The Boomers [Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964] do not care as much as the Millennials [those born after to the early 2000s],” Rogers claimed.

Rogers said part of the economic benefit of a robust environment is from outdoors recreation.

“The Lehigh Valley is one of the best outdoor recreation areas in the United States,” according to Rogers, saying 75 percent of area residents participate in some form of activity outdoors.

He said there are also healthy benefits to an emphasis on the environment.

“Just exposure to nature increased the healing process,” Rogers claimed.

Rogers said the Lehigh Valley already faces one obstacle that bolstering the environment could help overcome.

“In terms of carbon dioxide, the Lehigh Valley air quality is not good,” claimed Rogers, saying this can contribute to childhood asthma.

While EAC members listened attentively to Rogers’ approximate 30-minute talk, none moved to make a motion to vote on endorsing the program.

“We [the EAC] don’t take on projects on our own. We make recommendations,” Salisbury Township Director of Planning and Zoning Cynthia Sopka, EAC secretary, said.

“It’s like a 3,600-foot view of the environment,” EAC and Planning Commission member Glenn Miller said or Rogers’ talk. “And fitting that into the planning commission and zoning is the challenge,” Miller said.