“Too Many People”


Driving down Somerdale Road towards, the Deptford area (formerly my Rowan drive) more trees lay in ruins flattened and ready for more people to move in. A common sight in South Jersey these days. More and more people are moving to the area and want their house build the way they like.

In addition, South Jersey seemingly wants to see how many drugstores that can erect in an insanely small amount of space. We have enough drugstores to medicate a small country in one county. Sometimes we have an intersection with rival drugstores squaring off on opposite sides.

Everywhere you look…there is either a new home being build or sign simply saying sold signaling the future site of yet another house. Some towns have suffered horribly from Growing Pains, such as Washington Township who’s population has nearly doubled in the past decade. The suburban sprawl as it has come to be known is also responsible for horrible traffic in South Jersey. Some new towns don’t even enough city workers to take care of their town. Various streams dried up in the past few years because of constant construction (and dumping) in the last few years. Not to mention since many things are paved over its harder for rain to sink into the ground (which added to last summers drought).

Take a look at Sterling and how many more kids are going there than when were students. More and more intersections are requiring traffic lights around here, and while it’s a good thing safety wise it is just another indication of how many cars we have zooming around.

When Ken Hitchock returned to Philly to coach the Flyers, he couldn’t even figure out where he was in Voorhees. You can’t really blame him, because the white horse road area exploded in the past 10 years or so. Olive Garden, Fudruckers, Goodfellas, Lone Star, and the Comcast building and even the Skate Zone weren’t not around at the start of the 90’s. While its good for the economy, you have to wonder how over crowded South Jersey will become in another 10 years. Granted Camden County suffers the most, but I can’t imagine the population won’t overspill to Atlantic county and eat up more land for another cookie cutter home.

Often times when a shopping center fails it will stay there vacant mainly cause businesses see it as being a bad location. So they buy up more space destroy more trees, and sometimes purchase and destroy homes in order to mark their claim in the South Jersey businesses scene. Meanwhile the other shopping centers remain to become eyesores. The former one on the pike in Berlin comes to mind, and ones like Lions Head Plaza (in Somerdale) are in danger of sinking. I can't even remember more than one store being in the Berlin shopping center as long as I can recall. Why not destroy it and put a park there or something?

Because of the markets right now people have the advantage of the lowest mortgages in the 30 years and building a home has never been as cheap. So I can't really blame people for making the move now. Thankfully, our Governor wants to fight the sprawl and make it harder for construction to choke to death the people of South Jersey.

Some of you might be sitting here with your mouth wide open thinking that I have become a tree hugger or something , but most my readers likely have gotten bored and went back to looking at porn. But I am just sick of the over crowded streets and what used to be nice scenery being chewed up for more sheep to take up residence. There is an old saying around these parts. …Welcome to New Jersey….now get the hell OUT!