Bald eagle nest spotted near Lake Carnegie Princeton Packet, February 10, 2004
Development cited in water quality dip, The Trenton Times, April 10, 2003
'3 BR, Forest Vu' May Have Added Feature: Lyme Disease Risk New York Times, April 8, 2003
Best route on car emissions, The Star Ledger, March 8, 2003
To the Editor: More About Those Eagles, US 1, March 5, 2003
Calif. auto standards bill gets a green light in N.J., The Star Ledger, March 4, 2003
US 1 Editorial and Letters about Environment and Eagles, January 22 and February 19, 2003
Development debate focuses on water use, traffic, The Trenton Times, February 10, 2003
Panel seeks action on air pollution, Princeton Packet, February 4, 2003
DEP'S ANNUAL BALD EAGLE COUNT KICKS OFF YEARLONG CELEBRATION OF ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, January 29, 2003
Will reported sightings of bald eagles alter road plans? Princeton Packet, January 17, 2003
Gem in our midst The Trenton Times, January 15, 2003
New Administration Proposal Would Jeopardize Clean Water Act Protections for Streams, Lakes and Wetlands, National Resources Defense Council Press Release
The Forgotten Forest Product: Water, New York Times, Op-Ed January 3, 2003
Has eagle found a perch in Princeton? Princeton Packet, January 3, 2003
Stormwater runoff rules proposed The Trenton Times, December10, 2002
Jersey charts new course to protect water supply, The Star Ledger, December 10, 2002
Letter from Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association to NJDOT Bureau of Environmental Services, October 10, 2002
Hamlets' dilemma: To span or fight The Star Ledger, December 9, 2002
New Jersey Conservation Foundation Options to Purchase
10,000-acre Pine Barrens PropertyState reviews water management plan The Trenton Times, November 25, 2002
Farm to be preserved along scenic byway, The Trenton Times, October 29, 2002
`Green' award for town, The Trenton Times, October 22, 2002
Keep the promise of the Clean Water Act, The Star Ledger, October 21, 2002
Fall Comes To Trenton Marsh , by Carolyn Foote Edelmann, US 1, October 16, 2002
DEP's computer map shows pollution endangering water wells, The Star Ledger, September 26, 2002
D&R panel approves Toll recreation area, Princeton Packet, September 20, 2002
Bush Orders Faster Environmental Reviews, New York Times, September 19, 2002
Ivy vs. trees, The Trenton Times, August 31, 2002
Land-use law to get a review, The Philadeplphia Inquirer, August 30, 2002
State aims to corner watershed market, The Star Ledger, August 30, 2002
Smog tightens chokehold on Jersey, The Star Ledger, August 30, 2002
West Windsor seeks hearing on Toll's environmental permit, Princeton Packet, August 23, 2002
Waterway program in doubt, The Trenton Times, August 3, 2002
Regional approach to water pitched, The Trenton Times, July 2, 2002
Greenway chief honored, The Trenton Times, June 27, 2002
Offshore Oil Pollution Comes Mostly as Runoff Study Says, New York Times, May 24, 2002
Cherishing a nearby faraway place, The Trenton Times, May 22, 2002
Christie Whitman Holds Her Ground, New York Times, May 7, 2002
Cleaner fuel means cleaner air, Princeton Packet, Letter to Editor April 19, 2002
The water way, The Trenton Times, April 30, 2002
N.J. will buy cleaner fuel for buses, The Trenton Times, April 26, 2002
Governor McGreevey Protects Drinking Water on Earth Day, Sierra Club, April 22, 2002
State's plan will protect waterways, The Trenton Times, April 23, 2002
Marshes, Wherever They Are, Stay Dry, New York Times, April 21, 2002
Offer of help OK'd with reservations, Princeton Packet, April 19, 2002
Wetland losses mount, The Trenton Times, April 12, 2002
N.J. objects to Bush anti-smog plan, The Trenton Times, April 8, 2002
Clean-Air Standards Upheld, www.transact.org, April 2, 2002
Clean-water groups struggle to set plan, Asbury Park Press April 1, 2002
Gray Is Pushing Out Green When It Comes to Infrastructure, The Washington Post, March 23, 2002
PIRG seeks better freshwater protections, The Trenton Times, March 21, 2002
Invaders Reshape the American Landscape, New York Times, February 5, 2002
Articles about the Environment from 2001
Development cited in water quality dip
Thursday, April 10, 2003
By TRACEY L. REGAN
TRENTON - A new study ties a surge in development over the past two decades to declining water quality in streams and rivers in several regions of the state, including the Millstone and Neshanic rivers in the Raritan River watershed in central New Jersey.
The study, by the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, found that water quality had declined in 35 percent of watersheds since the early 1990s, many of them in areas that were rural until recently.
Based on state data from the 1990s, the report looked primarily at changes in the populations of insects and other small organisms in these waters. Fewer species were found in the more impaired streams, which were increasingly inhabited largely by pollution-tolerant animals and aquatic weeds.
Using these measures, state data showed that water quality declined by more than 10 percent in the 1990s in the Millstone River and Lawrence Brook, while the health of aquatic life in the Neshanic River declined by 6 percent.
The Millstone and the Lawrence Brook flow through one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. Between 1986 and 1995, some municipalities in the region, including West Windsor Township, developed more than 10 percent of their land area.
"Intuitively, we know that if you build right on the river bank, it will have an impact. But this data is quite stark," said NJPIRG's Douglas O'Malley.
The group is calling on Gov. James E. McGreevey to swiftly enact several water protection measures the governor has already proposed. Primary among them are a plan to strengthen water quality protections for 15 waterways and reservoirs and to tighten stormwater regulations. Together, these reforms would make it difficult for developers to construct houses within 300 feet of a stream bank.
McGreevey announced the plan to protect the waterways a year ago, and said recently that he will finalize it within the next several weeks.
"Now we're playing a game of beat the clock with developments in Hunterdon County," O'Malley said. The proposed Milligan Farms development in Union Township along Sidney Brook, and the proposed Windy Acres subdivision in Clinton Township on the south branch of the Rockaway Creek would be hard-pressed to meet the new environmental standards if the streams receive those protections, O'Malley said.
"It would create an incredibly high hurdle for treated sewage to meet," he noted, adding that both developments had received draft permits within the past several months.
Sen. Leonard Lance, R-Clinton, a vocal conservationist in the Legislature, joined NJPIRG yesterday in urging McGreevey to enact the reforms.
"While his talk is strong, he also has to walk the walk. We need to make sure the protection of these 15 waterways happens," said Lance, who spoke at NJPIRG's press conference yesterday of stream degradation at the hands of "rapacious developers."
These pollution trends documented by NJPIRG are not new. Studies conducted by the state in the late 1990s found that 35 percent of the state's lakes, rivers and streams were "fully fishable," while an even smaller number were swimmable. In 1998, a survey found too much of at least one pollutant in 56 of the 58 water bodies tested. Much of the pollution found then, as now, is phosphorous and nitrates from lawn runoff and residential sewage.
By contrast, the departure of manufacturing and significant improvements in sewage treatment over the past several decades have made former industrial waterways such as the Delaware River significantly cleaner.
Contact Tracey L. Regan at (609) 777-4465 or tregan@njtimes.com
Copyright 2003 The Times.
'3 BR, Forest Vu' May Have Added Feature: Lyme Disease Risk
By LES LINE, April 8, 2003Building a dream house in the woodlands of the Northeast can be a blueprint for getting Lyme disease, according to a recent study in Dutchess County, N.Y.
The trouble, scientists report, is that suburban and rural home development causes fragmentation of forests, fostering a population explosion among white-footed mice, the main carrier of the disease-causing bacteria.
The mice themselves are harmless, but blacklegged ticks feed on the rodents and can transmit the bacteria to humans. And the researchers found that in smaller forest patches, as many as 80 percent of the ticks were infected.
"Clearly, local planning boards need to consider human health as well as growth and the environment when approving housing projects," said Dr. Felicia Keesing, professor of biology at Bard College in Annandale, N.Y.
Dr. Keesing and her colleagues Brian Allen, a graduate student at Rutgers, and Dr. Richard Ostfeld, animal ecologist and tick expert at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., studied blacklegged ticks on 14 privately owned patches of maple forest ranging from 2 to 18 acres. Dutchess County, they note, has the highest number of people infected with Lyme disease in the country. The results were published in the February issue of the journal Conservation Biology.
"This research is important because it gives us a new way of looking at the transmission of diseases, and shows us that human health is affected by the local ecology and by land-use practices," said Dr. Michael Bower, program director of the National Science Foundation's division of environmental biology, which financed the study.
Fragmentation has been cited as a significant factor in declines of some forest-nesting birds, but another consequence is the loss of mammal diversity. Dr. Ostfeld described the white-footed mouse as "the jack-of-all-trades mouse, at home in forest, field or your basement."
"And without predators such as foxes and weasels or competitors like chipmunks and squirrels, their numbers multiply, especially in forest patches smaller than five acres," he added.
Blacklegged ticks, also called deer ticks, are uninfected when they hatch but promptly seek a blood meal. "In small forest patches, that meal will most likely come from white-footed mice," Dr. Keesing said.
The scientists found that study sites smaller than three acres averaged three times as many ticks as did larger forest patches and seven times as many infected ticks. At one woodland home, the tick density was 600 per acre and 75 percent of those insects were infected with Lyme disease. In an 18-acre patch, in contrast, the tick density was 100 per acre and only 40 percent were infected.
"People want a patch of woods in the backyard of their house," said Dr. Keesing, "so developers will take a tract of forest and carve it up into little pieces and then put in lawns. That's the worst possible landscape for Lyme disease."
A better approach, she said, would be to cluster houses in a large area of undeveloped forest.
Dr. Ostfeld said clearing small patches of forest near existing homes would be too drastic.
"People living in high-risk areas can protect themselves by wearing proper clothing and using repellents when they are outdoors and carefully checking themselves for ticks," he said. "And we're working on environmentally friendly methods of reducing tick populations."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/science/life/08LIME.html
Best route on car emissions
Saturday, March 08, 2003New Jersey has some of the dirtiest air in the nation, and much of it comes out of the exhaust pipes of our 5 million-plus cars and trucks. The smog they spew clouds our skies and threatens our health, particularly of the 600,0000 Jerseyans who have asthma or other respiratory problems.
Automakers and environmentalists have been battling in Trenton over legislation that would bring California's toughest-in-the-nation car pollution standards to New Jersey. If it passes, we would join New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont as the only states in the East having stricter car pollution laws than the federal government requires.
Auto manufacturers, particularly the big American ones that have staked their profits on smog-belching SUVs, see the California program as ruinously expensive, with little anti- pollution bang for the buck. The greens say getting even small amounts of garbage out of the air produces health benefits.
Everyone agrees we need cleaner air. But this issue isn't as clear as either side would like.
Give Detroit the nod on the numbers debate. The California program would reduce nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, the nasty chemicals that form lung-burning ozone smog, by just five to 13 tons a day more than federal rules taking effect over the next few years. That's not much, especially since even that paltry difference comes only after 20 years and still represents a tiny fraction of these chemicals floating around the state's air each day.
But history shows the environmentalists are right about the need to push carmakers to cut pollution.
California, wrestling with terrible smog in Los Angeles, began passing tough auto emissions laws almost 40 years ago, years before the federal government followed suit.
Automakers could not afford to ignore the state's huge population and vehicle fleet -- now 34 million people and 25 million vehicles -- and manufacturers found ways to build cleaner cars and trucks that still appealed to drivers. California's regulatory stick helped lead to today's cars being more than 90 percent cleaner than the vehicles of the 1960s.
It has not always been a smooth ride, and that is what is creating the conflict in Trenton. Since 1990, the California program has pushed for "zero emission vehicles," cars with no exhaust emissions. That means electric cars, and the move has been a flop because they proved expensive to make and sell. Few people wanted them because they cannot go far before needing a long recharge.
Manufacturers sank billions into electric cars, and most have now abandoned the projects. They legitimately worry that New Jersey signing on to the California scheme will lead to more lost money and wasted effort.
Safeguards can protect against those problems. The first comes from California itself. The state is reviewing its program and has proposed reducing the zero-emission-vehicle requirement in favor of requiring more gas-electric hybrids and fuel cell-powered cars and light trucks. The hybrids already are on the road and are getting better. The fuel-cell vehicles are supported by automakers and expected to be on the market in 12 years or so.
New Jersey lawmakers can add another safeguard. They can adopt a bill that clearly says the Legislature understands that technology changes over time and that the state and the Department of Environmental Protection are willing to modify the law as necessary. The law also should require regular DEP reviews to measure progress on fuel cells and the other advanced engineering required by the tougher standards.
New Jersey would be foolish to adopt California's strict auto emissions standards if a small pollution reduction is the only benefit. But they also help drive important technology innovations and, with some flexibility, they can help produce cleaner air in our state and around the country.
Copyright 2003 The Star-Ledger.
To the Editor: More About Those Eagles
March 5, 2003 US 1
I read with great interest Richard K. Rein's reply to Lincoln Hollister about the bald eagles in the vicinity of Carnegie Lake in Princeton (U.S. 1, February 19). I view the sightings of the bald eagle as a good omen that somehow, some way, a solution will be found that doesn't wreck the environment to build a highway called the Millstone Bypass, or what is more recently referred to as "Penns Neck Area Improvements."
I happen to think the balance is dangerously tilted in central New Jersey and the wildlife and birdlife don't have enough places to call home or seek a safe haven from the human population! It's time to guide growth away from environmentally sensitive areas, such as the Millstone River, Delaware and Raritan Canal, Carnegie Lake, and Washington Road's historic Elm trees. Some people don't question why and where a road is built. They say, "Why fight progress?" Well, that all depends on what on what we consider to be progress!
Building a highway that will cause more problems than it solves is never a solution! Building a highway next to a river or canal where millions of residents and businesses draw their water is not progress; it merely transfers the costs to water treatment when we have to pump the water to make it drinkable. Being afraid to drink the water coming from your tap and buying bottled water instead is not progress. Water quality is severely threatened because we are creating more miles of asphalt, parking lots and big box stores. Air quality will continue to diminish if people have to sit in their cars for longer periods of time or drive farther to services that are outside city centers and away from mass transit routes.
Our view of progress may differ somewhat, however we seem to agree that business leaders and environmentalists can sit down and find ways to co-exist.
Mr. Rein, please take up Mr. Hollister's invitation for a ride in a canoe and explore the D&R Canal and Millstone River when spring finally comes! You will find that every possibility must be explored in order to avoid destroying our waterways and natural places to construct a highway. Asphalt is man's final crop.
Keep the dialogue open. I am a person who is hopefully optimistic that the group of citizens, mayors, environmental organizations, corporate representatives and state agencies meeting across the table from one another in the process called the "Penns Neck Area EIS Roundtable" can take a very complex problem before them, weigh all the alternatives, and hammer out a new definition of "progress."
Mary M. Penney
Skillman
-----------------------
ALLOW ME TO REPORT: A friend who lives in Kingston reported seeing an (American Bald) eagle flying past her windows while she was working with a client last week (it would have been inappropriate for her to jump up and follow the bird with eyes or binoculars). This woman is a birder, a participant in the Kingston Christmas Bird Count. She was particularly aware of the bird's large bright/dark yellow beak -- not the size or color of the osprey, for example.
Another friend, new to the region, this past Saturday saw an (American Bald) eagle sitting on the ice on "What is that lake?" She meant the widened part of the Millstone River at US Route 1 and Plainsboro Road. Her companion saw it first and she didn't believe him. But there was no mistaking that head and that size. They tried to pull off, but everywhere was posted "No Trespassing."
She was very clear regarding size and coloring, the very white head, the very dark body feathers. I checked, as blandly as I could, about a "mask" -- in case it was an osprey. No mask. She knows I've just come back from seeing hundreds of bald eagles fishing on ice, then eating them in trees along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, near Grafton, Illinois. This is why she told me -- not because she realizes that eagle habitat has anything to do my concerns over bypass roads.
As Scott Isringhausen, site interpreter at Pere Marquette State Park, told us in February in Illinois, "In order to save the eagle, it is essential to save his habitat."
Carolyn Foote Edelmann
Edelmann wrote last week's cover story on the Plainsboro Preserve.
http://www.princetoninfo.com/200303/30305c02.html
Calif. auto standards bill gets a green light in N.J.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
By TRACEY L. REGAN
TRENTON - After idling for years, a bill that would require more New Jersey cars to abide by higher California emission standards made an incremental lurch forward yesterday.
The bill was released from an Assembly committee and appears headed for a first vote in the Senate as well, where it has been stalled for months in the Environment Committee.
The bill, which would require automakers to sell many more low-emission and technologically advanced vehicles here than in much of the rest of the country, was approved yesterday over the vehement objections of officials with the Ford and General Motors companies.
Environmental officials with the McGreevey administration, who have said little about the controversial proposal, testified yesterday that the California car standards would bring the state large reductions in ozone-forming pollutants over the next two decades.
By 2025, cars here would emit between 2.7 and 10.8 fewer tons per day of volatile organic compounds, for example, than they would under the federal emissions program to go into effect later this year, asserted Samuel Wolfe, an assistant commissioner for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Wolfe said it was difficult to estimate reductions precisely but said the DEP had used models developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make its projections.
Auto industry officials disagree. They say there is little difference between the federal and California standards, which have been adopted by a handful of Northeastern states, including New York and Massachusetts. They insist research and development to produce more environmentally friendly cars would be hobbled by the mandate, which calls for zero-emission cars that are difficult to make and unappetizing to car buyers.
"We spent a billion dollars on the electric vehicle, and California agrees it has no future," said Nancy Homeister, an environmental engineer with the Ford Motor Co.
California is reconsidering that portion of the standard, and New Jersey would have to accept whatever changes it makes, sponsors of the bill said.
In the late 1990s, then-Gov. Christie Whitman chose to adopt the emissions standards negotiated by the federal government with the three big automakers.
A bill embracing the California model has been stalled in the Senate Environment Committee, where co-Chairman Joseph Suliga, D-Linden, has expressed ambivalence. Suliga has a General Motors plant in his district.
Supporters of the bill cite a recent letter to Suliga signed by 26 senators, including the Republican president of the Senate, John Bennett, R-Little Silver, as instrumental in winning its release. The bill will be transferred to the Transportation Committee, they said.
"In some ways we were surprised there was a hearing. We were still negotiating with leadership," said Andrew Hudson, an advocate with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, who said he understood lawmakers' reluctance to ruffle the auto industry.
There are two manufacturing plants left in the state - a Ford plant in Edison and a General Motors plant in Linden.
"But the sad, honest truth is that those auto plants are struggling and the carmakers will make their decisions about them irrespective of this decision," Hudson noted.
Contact Tracey L. Regan at (609) 777-4465 or tregan@njtimes.com
Copyright 2003 The Times.
January 22, 2003
Have you heard about the Eagles?
That was the earnest question posed to me by Princeton University geology professor Lincoln Hollister, in a tone that suggested whatever I had heard might not be the complete truth. This was several weeks ago and the outline of an answer flashed through my mind like this:
I had indeed heard that the Eagles had just lost to the Giants in overtime and that, while they were headed to the playoffs nevertheless, their ultimate success there would depend on reconstituting their offense with Donovan McNabb returning from a broken ankle. Back many years ago, when I believed that it was not whether you won or lost a game, but by how much you won or lost the game that counted, I would have taken that information, combed the sports pages and the sports bars for the latest information, and concluded that whatever the point spread, I should deduct a few from the Eagles' side of the equation. A team with a quarterback problem going all the way to the Super Bowl? What are the odds of that happening, I think, as compared to the odds of all the bad things that can happen when a quarterback and his receivers are the least bit off in their timing?
I looked back at Hollister, a Harvard (Class of 1960) and Cal Tech-trained specialist in metamorphic petrology whom I first met when he was waging a valiant (but ultimately unsuccessful) effort to prevent the dismantling of the Princeton University geology museum, and somehow guessed that we were not on the same wave length. So I gave the short answer:
"Yeah, I heard they lost in overtime to the Giants."
"Bald eagles," Hollister replied, oblivious to my answer and obviously answering his own question, "have been sighted above Lake Carnegie, and there's some thought that they might even be nesting nearby," and at this point he seemed to pause a little, as if to open the mind to all the implications of the next phrase, "possibly at the Sarnoff Center."
Until then I had not heard of the eagles, as opposed to the Eagles, but I soon did. Articles and letters to the editor in the papers trumpeted the return of the bald eagles to central New Jersey. They had been seen in the early morning hours by rowers on Carnegie Lake and by walkers on the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.
I was even able to add my own eagle observation to the mix: A year ago the West Windsor-Plainsboro News received a report that an eagle had been sighted and photographed at the Sarnoff campus. But after a flurry of E-mails back and forth information about the photo was never received and the picture was never published.
Now I am not a betting man (if I were I would like the Raiders in the Super Bowl, even if the line gives the Buccaneers a few points), but I will make this prediction: We are sure to hear a lot more about the eagles as the deliberations continue over the proposed Millstone Bypass and its alignment.
Lincoln Hollister, whose great uncle was Lincoln Steffens, the famed muckraker of a century ago, surely will see to that, as will opponents of the bypass, which is configured to slice through a portion of the Sarnoff property and follow the D&R Canal as it carries traffic in and out of Princeton and eliminates as many as three traffic lights on Route 1 (at Washington Road, Fisher Place, and Harrison Street).
The bypass is heading toward some pivotal meetings as the planners prepare the Environmental Impact Statement that will play a large role in determining the exact location and configuration of the bypass -- a draft EIS is due in April. Between now and then we may hear more about those bald eagles -- the national bird that is found only in North America and that is listed on the Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list. What do you want to do, Princeton: Spend a few minutes every day at the traffic light at Washington Road, or drive a nesting pair of majestic eagles and their fledgling eaglets from their nest in some scrub pine near the towpath or in the Sarnoff woods?
There is only one problem with this moral dilemma. The eagles are not really endangered anymore. Back when they were first listed as endangered, there were only 400 nesting pairs known in the lower 48 states (many more have always nested in Alaska). Today there are reports of nearly 6,000 nesting pairs. In fact, the Wildlife Service proposed that the bald eagle be declared fully recovered in July of 2000 but delayed the decision until the experts decided what kind of management would be required once they were off the list.
So I have heard about the eagles -- the Eagles are extinct for this year in the National Football League. The eagles are making a dramatic comeback and the Millstone Bypass is not likely to deter them.
Copyright 2003 US 1
Between the Lines
To the Editor: Those Eagles, Is It Us or Them?February 19, 2003
I enjoyed Richard K. Rein's little piece (U.S. 1, January 22) about the eagles (bald) and me (not bald) . . . I think. Although I laughed, I came away with a feeling that somehow you had marginalized the importance of bald eagles in our back yard. In fact, it came across as a "nimby" article: eagles are OK over there, but not here where they might slow down sprawl. A zillion people walk the towpath every year, and now there is a chance to see the most majestic bird in North America during this stroll. I think that's a lot different than gathering up the kids in the SUV and heading off to Cape May for a wild eagle chase.
Also, I think you did a bit of a disservice to the now two-year process called the Penns Neck Area EIS. Did you know that what you call the "Millstone Bypass", which is a possible roadway section along the Millstone River and through the habitat that the bald eagles find inviting, is only one alternative available for improving traffic mobility across Route 1 at Washington Road? It is thus not "either/or" as implied in your column. We can have not only improved mobility on Washington Road but also keep the habitat for the eagles and other species. That is the goal of this "muckraker".
Yes, bald eagles are coming back. I hope we can continue to have a habitat hospitable to them so that the residents of central New Jersey will be able to experience the grandeur of our national emblem as it joins ospreys and cormorants and egrets and herons in feeding along the lower Millstone River. Everyone who has seen this habitat sees it as a real gem, a wilderness in the midst of New Jersey sprawl.
When the ice breaks, I invite you for a canoe ride up the Millstone River.
Lincoln Hollister
Richard K. Rein replies: It is true that on Super Bowl weekend I was having a little fun at the expense of our resurgent national emblem and our region's now-defeated professional football team. But Lincoln Hollister and I agree that roadways and wildlife are not and should not be an "either/or" proposition. That's why the public and its administrators place confidence in the exhaustive research, study, and reporting process now under way to alleviate congestion along Route 1.
In fact, I am not surprised that the eagles (bald ones) are makinig their way back to central New Jersey. Much of the constantly maligned new development in towns like West Windsor and Plainsboro turns out to be tightly clustered, and anything but sprawling. Both of those townships have aggressive open space programs, which is good news for the eagles. Now these towns especially want some better highways to link their developments to the rest of the community. That would be good news for people.
As for the canoe ride up the Millstone, I will join you, Lincoln, if you will take a ride with me through some of those clustered developments.
Development debate focuses on water use, traffic
Monday, February 10, 2003
By TRACEY L. REGAN
MANCHESTER - Dueling factions of silver-haired pensioners are waging a polite war over water in this Pinelands town in the center of the state's booming retirement enclave, where the spigot has recently run dry.
Citing the threat of clogged roads, dwindling streams and "showers once a month," residents in the town's Whiting section are calling on the state to deny the local water company a permit to pump the millions of gallons of water it is requesting to serve a new shopping center and as many as 1,000 retirement homes.
But supporters of the expansion argue that the permit stands between the town and much-needed amenities, including a dialysis center for residents who are paying exorbitant taxi fares to seek treatment in nearby towns and a developer's promise to unsnarl a dangerous intersection.
The pastor of the Whiting Assembly of God Church even complained recently that his temporary meeting place in a local funeral home "is less than desirable."
The pitched battle here is emblematic of struggles statewide as pro-development and anti-sprawl forces wage a philosophical war to determine New Jersey's future.
The local government has already granted approvals for half of the new housing and the shopping center, although the Crestwood Village Water Co. said it does not have much more water to sell without a significant expansion of its permit.
The owners of the water company are the developers of the proposed housing for the western section of the town.
Department of Environmental Protection officials call the town's conundrum a "classic case of where we allowed the system to go along on its own," although they say they have not decided whether or not to grant the permit.
The agency's staff recommended the expansion last fall, but critics call their assessment shortsighted.
Foes of sprawl development, who applauded Gov. James E. McGreevey for his recent promise to check runaway development, call Whiting an early test of the administration's willingness to put on the brakes.
They note that local planning boards across the state have promised thousands of development permits without first determining whether they had sufficient water.
-- -- --
Local residents say the recent drought, when they were forbidden to wash their cars or water their lawns, has many of them worried about parched times to come.
A meeting last month on the water permit, which would allow the water company to use another 95 million gallons a year from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, drew about 400 residents from Manchester and neighboring towns.
"I'm torn," said Isabelle Lepore, a soft-spoken resident of Crestwood Village, the town's first retirement community. "The main objection is that we just had a bad drought, and they're afraid that in future droughts we'll run out of water."
While those attending the meeting clapped politely for all of the speakers, many said they were inclined to oppose the new development.
"It's difficult to get out of the village because there is so much traffic. It's not built for it," said Louise Barton, a retired teacher from New York City. She was concerned about the impact the withdrawals would have on the area's streams and swamps.
"If you pull the plug on the Pinelands, there will be no water and it won't be the Pinelands," she said.
They were challenged by other residents who accused them of siding with environmentalists and championing "tadpoles and snakes" over fellow retirees.
"There are more seniors coming here every year. Why are they coming down? Because they can't pay their taxes," said Lewis Koushel, who lived in Manchester until last year and is a supporter of the dialysis center.
"We need more stores. We need more competition. I think everybody knows the menu at Dimples - there's nowhere to go after 8 o'clock for a cup of coffee," he said.
The mayor of Manchester, who favors the new development, urged residents to fight instead against state regulators who, he said, have been pressured by the state to accept 2,500 houses on the other side of town. That development has been in court for years.
"That would require three, four or maybe five times as much water as the applicant is asking," said Mayor Michael Fressola. "That's where the real battle is."
He later called the naysayers unrealistic.
"This is going to be built," Fressola said. "The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. This will stabilize the tax rate."
-- -- --
The DEP staff gave the permit preliminary support last October, saying it would cause a 12-inch drop in the level of the well from which they want to draw additional water but would cause no significant drop in any other township wells.
Critics say the agency failed to assess the impact on local streams or wetlands.
The Pinelands Commission, the agency that oversees development in the 1.1 million-acre Pinelands National Reserve, last week called on the DEP to honor a 1989 policy requiring water purveyors to seek alternatives to withdrawals from the Kirkwood-Cohansey.
"Both the million-acre Pinelands National reserve and the state-designated protection area were established over 23 years ago, in large measure to safeguard the region's water resources and protect habitats and species dependent on those resources," said Annette Barbaccia, the commission's director.
The Pinelands Commission has recommended that the state grant no additional withdrawals of water from Kirkwood-Cohansey until a recently funded five-year study of the aquifer is completed.
Carleton Montgomery, director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, said the additional withdrawal sought by Manchester would cause "an unambiguous drop in the water table and therefore a drop in stream flows and wetlands."
A consultant to the water company said the DEP never required the company to explore alternatives to the Kirkwood-Cohansey.
The consultant warned residents that drawing from a deeper well "could result in water rates doubling or even tripling."
Residents from neighboring towns warned Manchester at the recent meeting not to repeat what they called a similar mistake made by Berlin Township. A recent, controversial well expansion there led to some well failures and foul odors because the water was being drained from nearby swamps, they said.
A year ago, the DEP recommended that the Berlin permit be withdrawn, but has not yet officially pulled it.
Contact Tracey L. Regan at (609) 777-4465 or tregan@njtimes.com
Copyright 2003 The Times.
Panel seeks action on air pollution
To the editor:
The following letter was sent to Gov. James E. McGreevey:
We are writing to you because of our concern about two items of legislation which have many sponsors but which have been stalled in state legislative committees. We are appealing for your leadership to help enact the following bills affecting public health with regard to indoor and outdoor air pollution.
1) A294/S444 - Permits Local Governments to Restrict Smoking in Public Places: Two and a half years ago the Princeton Regional Health Commission enacted an ordinance to restrict smoking in Princeton's public places. This public health measure would have been beneficial to residents and especially to employees who are subjected to smoke inhalation for long periods of times and who often do not have many choices of employment available to them. The ordinance was challenged in court by tobacco and restaurant interests who won because of state legislation from the mid-1980s barring municipalities from such action. The 1980s' laws with this restriction were passed after heavy lobbying from the same groups which are still trying to thwart municipal action to protect public health. In addition, the 1980s legislation was enacted before myriad studies pointed to the destructive health effects of secondhand smoke on non-smokers.
Recently, New York City passed legislation banning smoking in public places because New York state law does not prevent such local protection. We do not think New Jersey residents and employees should be disadvantaged in this important area of public health.
2) A409/S121 - Authorizes and Directs NJDEP to Implement Phase II of the California Low Emission Vehicle Program in New Jersey Beginning in 2006: This legislation is critical especially now as federal air quality laws are being weakened. The rise in asthma cases, especially among children, is one factor of concern. Federal action to effectively improve motor vehicle emissions and gas mileage has stalled. It is thus necessary for the Northeast states, which are most seriously affected, to join with California in the effort to create an incentive for the automobile industry to be more responsive, particularly given our difficult worldwide situation. Such action has already been taken by several states including New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine.
We do not think public health should continue to be held hostage by special interests and hope you will assist with your moral leadership.
Norman J. Sissman, M.D.
Chair
Princeton Regional Health Commission
Monument Drive
Princeton
DEP'S ANNUAL BALD EAGLE COUNT KICKS OFF YEARLONG CELEBRATION OF ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
TRENTON --- This month, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) used its annual two-day bald eagle count to kick off a yearlong awareness campaign marking the thirtieth anniversary of New Jersey's Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act. In addition, the DEP selected the bald eagle as the first in a series of monthly profiles on New Jersey's endangered species.
"New Jersey's Endangered Species Act is landmark legislation that has forever changed the way we manage our wildlife and natural habitats," said DEP Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell. "Despite its continued endangered status, the bald eagle is one of New Jersey's great success stories in endangered species protection and management."
Prior to 1982, the number of bald eagles had plummeted statewide - fewer than 10 bald eagles were observed in the State's initial annual survey in 1978 - as hunting early in the century and extensive pesticide use in later decades decimated the eagle population. Beginning in 1982, the DEP's Division of Fish and Wildlife (Fish and Wildlife) engaged in a comprehensive strategy to address the situation, helping the State reduce the use of many pesticides that weaken eagle eggs and acquiring 60 bald eagles from Canada to form the nucleus of a new breeding population.
"Unfortunately, safeguards for endangered species are once again under attack at the federal level," said Campbell. "The Governor's anti-sprawl initiatives acknowledge the importance of protecting endangered species by preserving critical habitat from overdevelopment."
As part of the yearlong celebration of species conservation, the DEP will focus each month on a different threatened or endangered species found in New Jersey. In New Jersey, the bald eagle breeding population living here year-round is listed as endangered, while the wintering population is threatened.
Today, populations of wintering and breeding eagles continue to climb steadily statewide, with the number of known breeding pairs rising from a low of one in 1982 to 34 in 2002.
As part of the eagle population monitoring, Fish and Wildlife coordinates an annual Mid-Winter Bald Eagle Survey every January, which focuses on known eagle wintering areas throughout New Jersey, including the upper Delaware River, most of the major reservoirs, and the South Jersey river systems.
This year, over 75 volunteers counted 137 bald eagles and five golden eagles. The count is lower than previous years' observations - volunteers counted 165 bald eagles in 2002 and 140 in 2001 - yet Fish and Wildlife biologists say that this likely is a random result of weather conditions and not reflective of any drop in the total population.
New Jersey's Endangered and Nongame Species Act was signed into law on December 14, 1973, two weeks before President Nixon signed the federal Endangered Species Act. The law is designed to protect species whose survival in New Jersey is imperiled by loss of habitat, over-exploitation, pollution, or other impacts. New Jersey currently lists more than 35 species as endangered and more than 25 species as threatened.
For more information on each month's featured endangered species and updates about coming conservation events, visit the DEP's website at: http://www.state.nj.us/dep.
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/newsrel/releases/03_0007.ht
Will reported sightings of bald eagles alter road plans?
By: David Campbell , Staff Writer 01/17/2003
ANALYSIS: Advocates say birds' presence bolsters area's status as wildlife refuge.
What do the recent spate of reported American bald eagle sightings in the vicinity of Lake Carnegie have to do with the former Millstone Bypass? Let's just say they're on the agenda.
In recent months, reported sightings in the area of the lake and the Kingston lock of the Delaware & Raritan Canal have been pressed into service by environmental advocates seeking to highlight the area as a wildlife refuge that should be protected.
Sightings reportedly have been made by amateur and Princeton University rowers, residents and at least one out-of-towner, and have been registered by the state and national Audubon Society.
But most outspoken about the eagles - regardless of whether they saw them themselves or not - have been environmentalists affiliated with the Penns Neck Area Environmental Impact Statement Partners' Round Table. Of those interviewed by The Packet, only one person reported actually seeing the birds.
The round table, a community-advisory panel to the Voorhees Transportation Policy Institute at Rutgers University, is helping weigh cultural and environmental impacts from potential alternatives to the former bypass.
A draft Environmental Impact Statement evaluating 18 roadway alignment alternatives to the former state-endorsed roadway is expected to be released in the spring. The state Department of Transportation commissioned Rutgers to study possible solutions to traffic congestion in the Penns Neck area around Route 1 and Washington Road after former Gov. Christie Whitman rejected the agency's recommendation favoring the Millstone Bypass.
A chief component of many of those alternatives incorporate an eastside connector road between Route 571 and Route 1 that would run along the Millstone River, and according to those most vocal about the eagles, cut a swath through a wildlife preserve.
Ridgeview Road resident Lincoln Hollister, a geology professor at Princeton University and a longtime opponent of the former bypass, said the Penns Neck Area EIS was very much on his mind when he called The Packet about the eagle sightings.
In December, members of the round table delivered reports and a photograph of an eagle reportedly taken by a rower and Kingston resident to the project team at Rutgers as further evidence of the need for conservation in the region, said Mr. Hollister, who hasn't seen one of the birds himself but cites five others whom he says have.
Jon Carnegie, senior project manager with the Transportation Policy Institute, confirmed receiving the reports and said the institute has notified state and federal wildlife agencies.
"We're taking appropriate actions to fully consider the sightings of these eagles in the vicinity of the project area," Mr. Carnegie said, noting that preliminary feedback from wildlife experts indicates the birds probably are migratory.
"For the people dealing with the EIS, it's not a question of stopping (the roadway) or being obstructionist," said Mr. Hollister. "The agenda is preserving this wild area, and that's not against the Penns Neck EIS. The eagle is being used as an attention getter to this existing bird refuge."
Nassau Street resident Karyn Milner, one of Mr. Hollister's sources, said she saw two eagles in October while driving past the Lake Carnegie boat launch off Route 27.
For the past year and a half, Ms. Milner said, she has observed what she believes are several immature eagles along the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath along the lake, evidence she said that the birds are nesting and not just stopping for food on their fall migration.
Ms. Milner said she is concerned about encroachment by university construction and the bypass plan. She reported her October sighting to the state, and spread the word through an e-mail network of the Millstone Bypass Alert, an affiliation of around two dozen area advocacy groups.
It was through this network that Ms. Milner's e-mail reached Mr. Hollister, first alerting him to the birds.
The Sierra Club's Laura Lynch, who sits on the Partners' Roundtable and has been quoted in the media linking the eagles with the Penns Neck Area EIS, said she would be outspoken about the birds whether or not their habitat was in the path of a possible future roadway.
"The impulse hasn't been 'let's fight the road, so hey, let's find an endangered animal,' " said Ms. Lynch, debunking the notion that the eagle is a fraud perpetrated by bypass opponents.
Those seeking to raise awareness of the eagle in the context of the EIS have no illusions that one or two eagles - if they are, in fact, nesting in the area - can kill the road, said Ms. Lynch. But they do want the birds' presence to be considered along with the trove of other environmental and cultural data under review, she said.
"We haven't been plotting and scheming; it's just another factor," Ms. Lynch said. "There's no aim to find the nest with an agenda of stopping the road. The project is too big, and a lot of little pieces. If there's something in the way, you move the piece."
Laurie Larson, a Montgomery Township resident and compiler for the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count in December, said she received a report of a bald eagle sighting at Mercer County Park in West Windsor during the count.
As secretary of the New Jersey Audubon Society's Bird Records Committee, she has received numerous reports of sightings in the vicinity of Lake Carnegie, she said.
Given their biology, Ms. Larson said, the birds likely were migrants stopping for fish at the lake and not nesting.
"You have to have much more than one sighting of a migrant eagle to protect a habitat, but I'm sympathetic to their (environmental advocates') concerns," she said. "Anyone who's interested in birds understands it's important to protect their habitat."
Bald eagles, which are on the state's threatened species list, are on the rise in New Jersey, up from a single nest reported between 1970 and 1988 to 27 in 2001, said Ms. Larson, who credited efforts by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Ms. Larson said it is important for sightings to be reported to the DEP's Endangered and Nongame Species Program, which can be reached at http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/ensphome.htm.
©Packet Online 2003
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
BY EDITORIAL
One of Mercer County's finest, and least-known, assets is the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh. A 1,250-acre wetland near the Delaware River, it sprawls across parts of four municipalities - Trenton, Hamilton and the two Bordentowns - and is centered on the county-owned John Roebling Memorial Park. Flora and fauna abound here. Trails and waterways invite such recreational activities as hiking, canoeing, fishing and birdwatching. The marsh is rich in history, as well. It is home to the largest Native American village site in the mid-Atlantic region, with artifacts dating back 6,000 years; the Watson House, the oldest house in Mercer County; and the remains of White City Amusement Park, which a century ago attracted visitors from across the region.
For years, the Delaware and Raritan Greenway, a nonprofit land conservancy that has led the fight to preserve thousands of acres of open space in central New Jersey, has been trying to raise public awareness and use of the marsh, even while improving its protection. Now it has been instrumental in forming "Friends of the Marsh," which held its second meeting this week. The Friends will provide the organizational framework necessary to raise funds and successfully lobby legislators for such things as additional public-land purchases, improved trails, protection for the park against pollution and designation of the area as a National Wildlife Refuge. Its most ambitious goal is to build a nature center on one of the bluffs overlooking the marsh.
The Greenway and others are rendering a great service by protecting and promoting this gem in our midst.
Copyright 2003 The Times.
New Administration Proposal Would Jeopardize Clean Water Act Protections for Streams, Lakes and Wetlands, says NRDC
Group Warns Proposal Part of a Larger Campaign to Gut Key Environmental LawsWASHINGTON (January 10, 2002) -- Today's Bush administration proposal to limit the scope of Clean Water Act coverage would threaten all U.S. waterways, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). The administration issued two related documents: an "advanced notice of proposed rulemaking," which calls into question federal Clean Water Act protection for a variety of waterbodies; and an attached "guidance" document for the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which discourages their field offices from protecting wetlands. The advanced notice allows for a 45-day public comment period.
"There is no legal or scientific justification for legalizing pollution in waterways that have been protected for three decades," said Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC's Clean Water Project. "The Bush administration doesn't seem to understand that all of our waters are connected. If you allow corporate polluters to dump toxic waste in creeks, it will flow into our rivers and threaten our drinking water."
Today's proposal opens up a range of possible rule changes, but any change would jeopardize the integrity of the Clean Water Act, Stoner said. The waterways at risk are creeks, small streams, and many types of wetlands, which could become vulnerable to unrestricted dredging, filling and waste dumping. Exempting them from clean water protection would affect all Americans by drying up and polluting drinking water sources, and flooding homes and businesses. Finalizing this proposal also could threaten wildlife habitat. For example, it could decimate the U.S. duck population.
"The administration's proposals are scientifically bankrupt," said Daniel Rosenberg, a wetlands expert at NRDC. "The Clean Water Act has been tremendously successful because its longstanding rules ensure that all waterbodies, large or small, are protected. Once again, the White House has tuned out the science and is only listening to the siren song of mall developers and mining companies."
The Army Corps of Engineers and EPA claim that the proposed rulemaking is a necessary response to a January 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC), that limited federal Clean Water Act authority over wetlands that were protected only because they provide habitat for migratory birds. However, neither the Supreme Court ruling nor the majority of lower court rulings suggested the need for new rules.
"The Supreme Court did not suggest that the basic framework of the Clean Water Act be dismantled," said Stoner. "Invoking this court decision is just an excuse to allow developers, mining companies, and other polluting industries to fill in wetlands and to dump waste into small streams. These radical changes in the Clean Water Act are being promoted by some of the same polluting industries that financed the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign."
States do not have programs to compensate if the administration kills federal protection, Stoner said. Since most states rely on the backstop of federal regulation, few have comprehensive programs that protect wetlands, creeks, streams and ponds. States have largely relied on federal Clean Water Act permits as the primary way to control pollution in their waterways.
NRDC said today's proposal is part of a larger administration campaign. "This is just one salvo in the Bush administration's all-out assault on fundamental protections for our air, water and public health," said Gregory Wetstone, NRDC's director of advocacy. "Emboldened by the election, and unrestrained by serious congressional oversight, the Bush administration has intensified its effort to undermine our landmark environmental laws."
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/030110.aspreltaed article and editorial in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/politics/11WATE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/opinion/11SAT1.html
The Forgotten Forest Product: Water
By MIKE DOMBECK
STEVENS POINT, Wis. - My daughter, Mary, is a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in Mali. Each day she gets a small amount of drinking water, which she must purify, plus two buckets of water for bathing. We are far more fortunate here in the United States, a relatively water-rich nation. Yet even here, water restrictions have become the norm in some parts of the country - in the East, where supplies once seemed inexhaustible, and in the arid West, where a number of states, along with Mexico, routinely fight over the trickle from what is now the parched Colorado River.
Given such realities, I am puzzled that water rarely enters the debate as the Bush administration and interest groups argue about roadless areas, logging and forest fire management. For water is perhaps the most important forest product.
Forests generate most of the water in the country, providing two-thirds of all the precipitation runoff - the water that comes from the sky - in the 48 contiguous states. Some 14 percent of all runoff comes from the roughly 190 million acres of our national forests, which take up only 8 percent of the land. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 60 million people in 3,400 communities in 33 states rely on national forests for their drinking water. Millions more depend on state and private forests to facilitate the refilling of aquifers from which they draw their water.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the vital connection between forests and water. When Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first United States Forest Service chief, set up the national forest system, they talked about managing for the greatest good for the greatest number - for the long run. This was in response to the cut-and-run era of timber harvests that left the United States with 80 million acres of denuded forests known as clear-cuts, mostly in the East and upper Midwest. Roosevelt, Pinchot and other federal policymakers were most concerned about preserving the long-term timber supply and the watershed function of the forests.
Yet in modern times, this connection has been lost. When I was in the Clinton administration, I participated in more than 100 Congressional and public hearings and fielded thousands of questions about forest policy. Then, as now, water rarely surfaced as a forest management issue. Yet water from our national forests has an economic value of more than $3.7 billion a year, according to a Forest Service report issued in 2000.
How do forests produce and preserve water? The complex array of trees, shrubs, ground covers and roots slows runoff from rain and snow, and water is purified as it percolates through the soil and into aquifers. By slowing runoff, forests also reduce floods and erosion, minimizing the sediment entering streams and rivers.
Mature forests do this work best. They have the best soil, and their mixed canopy - a mosaic of open and closed spots among the treetops - allows for snowfall accumulation and eventual runoff. Old trees also use less water for growth than young trees do. And as intact forests better regulate water chemistry and temperatures, they enhance habitats for aquatic species. (In many streams this means better recreational opportunities, such as trout fishing.)
New York City has some of the best water in the world because it maintains healthy forests in its Catskill, Delaware and Croton watershed system. The E.P.A. recently warned that New York would have to spend more than $6 billion on a purification plant if it failed to protect those watersheds.
It comes as no surprise that the Bush administration is proposing new forest-management policies. New administrations always bring new policies. What's unfortunate, however, is that some of these policies effectively abandon Theodore Roosevelt's long-term goals. Roosevelt valued open-space preservation and resource conservation. That's why I support the recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the ban on building roads in roughly 60 million acres of national forest. Maintaining these areas is both prudent and conservative, especially given the explosive rate of urban expansion and the rapid decline of open space.
New national-forest planning regulations should now specify that the remaining old-growth public forests should not be harvested, since these wild lands provide the cleanest water in the country. Rather than wasting energy on the rancorous, tired debates about road building in the wilderness and old-growth forest management, the focus should be on how to let our forests do their job of producing high-quality water. Given our water supply problems, this should be the highest priority of forest management.
Mike Dombeck, a professor of global environmental management at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, was chief of the United States Forest Service from 1997 to 2001.
Has eagle found a perch in Princeton?
By: David Campbell , Staff Writer 01/03/2003
This photo, posted on Ed Hewitt's Web site, row2k.com, reportedly shows an American Bald Eagle in flight over Lake Carnegie in September.
------------------------------------------------------------------------Reported sightings in vicinity of Lake Carnegie have stirred up some feathers
Rumored sightings of an American Bald Eagle in the vicinity of Lake Carnegie and the Kingston lock have stirred up some feathers in Princeton.
"It is our national bird, and it had been fairly rare in New Jersey," said Westcott Road resident Patrick Lyons. "When the closest we get to an eagle these days in on a quarter, the fact that one has been sighted in this hugely dense populated area I think is terrific."
Mr. Lyons said he hasn't sighted the eagle himself, but he said Kingston resident Ed Hewitt, a rower who has trained on Lake Carnegie and who runs a rowing Web site called row2k.com, evidently has.
Mr. Hewitt, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, and a boatload of rowing coaches reportedly sighted the eagle over the lake in early September, and a photo of the bird is posted on the row2k.com Web site.
Similar third-party sightings are being reported by other Princeton residents, as well.
Tom Southerland, a world-class birder who recently announced the closing of his company, Princeton Nature Tours, after more than 21 years of leading nature trips around the globe, said he hasn't seen the eagle.
But Mr. Southerland reports hearing of several sightings this fall by friends, some who reportedly sighted the eagle while hiking the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath, another a rower who saw the bird while practicing on the lake.
Another sighting reportedly occurred recently in the vicinity of Rosedale Park in Hopewell Township during the Audubon Society's annual Christmas bird count.
Ridgeview Road resident Lincoln Hollister, a geology professor at Princeton University, reports five credible sightings of the bird, which include the one reportedly made by Mr. Lyons' rowing friend, Mr. Hewitt, who reported seeing the eagle stealing fish from ospreys, which he said is typical behavior for American Bald Eagles.
According to Mr. Hollister, who said he has yet to see the bird firsthand, another source is a student of his on the university crew team who said his coaches reportedly saw the eagle.
Another is an e-mail from a friend who forwarded to him an e-mail of someone who saw the bird between where the Millstone River enters Lake Carnegie and the lake's dam near Kingston.
The other two firsthand sightings, Mr. Hollister said, were reported to him by Regatta Row resident Eunice Wilkinson, whose residence looks out on Lake Carnegie.
But Ms. Wilkinson said she hasn't seen the eagle herself. She said two friends of hers have - one an area resident, the other a Canadian, both of whom are currently out of town, she said.
Mr. Hollister said he has gone looking for eagle nests with his sons. They found no definite nest, but may have found one site that is a candidate for an eagle nesting site, though to protect the bird habitat he wouldn't divulge locations.
"If there is a nest out there, people will want to go out looking for it," he said.
And while the fact that many of the reported sightings are secondhand, the sheer volume of them is noteworthy. And then there's the photo taken by Mr. Hewitt.
"That's enough to convince me these things exist," Mr. Hollister said. "The eagles are indeed coming back in New Jersey. Whether they are just flying around taking fish and enjoying the Millstone-Lake Carnegie area, or whether in fact they have a nest, we have no idea about that."
Bald Eagles have been spotted in New Jersey with some frequency, according to reports on the New Jersey Audubon Society Web site. The birds are on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's endangered species list for the state, though in 1999 the Clinton Administration proposed delisting the Bald Eagle from the threatened and endangered species list for the lower 48 states.
©Packet Online 2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=6585858&BRD=1091&PAG=461&dept_id=425695&rfi=6
Stormwater runoff rules proposed
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
By TRACEY L. REGAN
TRENTON - The McGreevey administration is proposing new rules for managing stormwater runoff from development in an effort to reduce what officials call a significant source of pollution to streams and aquifers and a contributing factor in floods and declining water tables.
The new rules, proposed yesterday, would call upon developers to figure out how to better balance paved areas with landscaping in order to retain water at a given site. The new rules would require developers to maintain the same rate of groundwater recharge at a development as exists before it is built upon.
Stream buffers and hedgerows are one approach in an overall strategy in which retention basins "we hope will become a technology of the past," said Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Developers would be required under the new rules to create 300-foot buffers to protect the state's most pristine streams and reservoirs. The rules would be relaxed somewhat in areas such as cities and farms where stream corridors are already disturbed.
The proposed changes mark the first update of the state's stormwater rules since they were adopted in 1983, Campbell said.
The DEP will also ask municipalities to devise plans to control stormwater from existing and new development. Such plans, which are required by the federal Clean Water Act, might include street sweeping and new grading, but in general will not involve pouring more concrete, Campbell said.
Bill Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, said he was concerned about the cost of the proposed regulations at a time when towns and cities are struggling to balance their budgets.
Environmental advocates applauded the state's proposals, however, which they called long overdue.
"We've hit rock bottom and now we're trying to reform, when there still is some buffer left," said Maya Van Rossum, director of the Delaware Riverkeeper, adding, "Too much drinking water has been written off because of stormwater contamination."
Contact Tracey L. Regan at (609) 777-4465 or tregan@njtimes.com
Copyright 2002 The Times
Jersey charts new course to protect water supply
Tougher rules would limit development, focus on conservation
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
BY STEVE CHAMBERS
Star-Ledger StaffThe drought that prompted water restrictions over the summer has spawned its first set of environmental regulations, tough new rules intended to protect the water supply by restricting development in outlying areas.
The new rules, announced yesterday by state environmental Commissioner Bradley Campbell, will dramatically increase the protective buffers around vital streams, wetlands and reservoirs from 50 feet to 300 feet.
The rules -- expected to go into effect in about a year -- also will alter the way new developments treat storm water, focusing more on getting that water back into the ground than piping it off site. And for the first time, the state will recommend new technologies -- from porous pavement to innovative uses of vegetation -- to accomplish that goal.
Environmentalists embraced the new rules as a solid step toward protecting the water supply and attacking the dangerous flood-and-drought cycle that has afflicted the state for years. Builders were predictably wary, and the League of Municipalities voiced concern about another mandate being shouldered by taxpayers.
In keeping with state efforts to rein in sprawl, the new rules -- which still require public hearings -- make a number of provisions for developers in cities and older suburbs. The state will require new developments to "recharge" as much storm water into underground aquifers as seeped into the ground before, but that "100 percent standard" is waived in developed areas, as are the wide stream buffers.
"We're going down a totally new road," said David Pringle, campaign director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. "It's absolutely needed, and, while this doesn't get us to our destination, it gets us a long way there."
But Tony DiLodovico of Schoor DePalma, one of the state's leading engineering firms, said the new rules may get some people knee-deep in water, particularly in parts of the state with lots of bedrock or water tables close to the surface.
"When you are forcing storm water into the ground anywhere near existing development, there is always the fear that it will end up in someone else's basement," he said.
During the height of the drought, environmentalists had complained that storm water in New Jersey was treated largely as a nuisance, piped off site into streams where most of it flowed out to sea. Campbell talked of this water as a vital resource that could help stave off relentless drought.
Developers say they agree that it is important to protect the state's water supply, but they have balked at accepting blame for droughts and floods. The U.S. Geological Survey, while noting the recent drought produced record low stream flows and groundwater levels, also has stopped short of laying the blame on development.
David Fisher, a member of the state Planning Commission who works in the development industry, said the new rules make builders a scapegoat for the state Department of Environmental Protection's own historic failure to address the state's water-supply problems.
"I'm not sure you achieve much of anything by squeezing a little recharge out of what little development is happening in the state right now," he said.
But environmentalists argue that when sprawling parking lots, big-box stores and large housing developments take the place of forests, it is bound to have a measurable effect on the amount of water seeping into the ground.
"There is no question that sprawl development depletes aquifer recharge and increases the volume of runoff dumped in our streams and on downstream communities," said Maya Van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper. "Common sense would allow people to realize that."
While the proposed "100 percent" recharge standard will be new terrain for developers, the DEP stopped short of a more restrictive standard. That is because the amount of water calculated to reach aquifers is generally less than one quarter of the 43 to 45 inches of rainfall that falls each year on the state.
Most of that water is absorbed by trees and vegetation on undeveloped property, and winds up evaporating or flowing into streams. Since much vegetation would be removed, environmentalists had pushed the DEP to increase the amount of water getting to the aquifer, but the agency opted not to go that far.
The DEP did, however, attempt to attack the runoff that most environmentalists agree is the most serious threat to the state's water supply. These pollutants -- car and truck oils, road salt, lawn fertilizers and pet feces -- currently wash into streams with the rush of storm water.
The new rules will require a plan to filter 80 percent of those pollutants from the storm water, possibly making use of the same techniques like filtering layers beneath new porous pavements or grassy buffers that would serve the same function.
The rules come as new federal regulations are requiring towns to present regional storm-water management plans. Bill Dressel, executive director of the League of Municipalities, said the DEP might have softened that blow, but he said comprehensive, expensive reports may now be required.
Steve Chambers covers land-use issues. He can be reached at schambers@starledger.com or (973) 392-1674.
Copyright 2002 The Star-Ledger
Hamlets' dilemma: To span or fight
Future of one-lane bridges a rocky road for rural Jersey
Monday, December 09, 2002
BY STEVE CHAMBERS
Star-Ledger StaffThe twisting country roads that lead to the Hunterdon County hamlet of Mountainville cross tea-colored streams on charming one-lane bridges.
These bridges and hundreds like them across rural New Jersey force motorists to stop at opposite banks and wave one another across. But that folksy courtesy belies a bitter feud being waged over these historic crossings.
Residents have fought pitched battles with engineers bent on modernizing single-lane spans they argue are unsafe and ill-equipped to handle increased traffic, bulkier school buses and heavier fire trucks.
Locals insist wider bridges will only beget new road projects, which will pave the way for more of the growth that is beginning to overrun the state's last rural places.
With county officials planning to widen two one-lane bridges in and around Mountainville, some residents are vowing a fight for their way of life.
"Part of the character of this area is its winding roads and narrow bridges," said Libby Devlin, who can see one of the spans from the back window of her historic home. "If we lose that, we'll be just like anywhere else."
John Glynn, director of roads, bridges and engineering in Hunterdon County, said local norms must sometimes give way to change. He has overseen perhaps two dozen bridge widenings in a quarter century and, with about 50 one-lane bridges left in the county, he sees more on the horizon.
With development on the rise, once-sleepy roads are becoming too busy for bridges designed for horse and buggy, Glynn said. He said prudent fiscal management demands engineers build new bridges to meet a community's needs for the next five decades.
"I don't think anybody wants to see these areas change, but we have to spend the public dollars wisely," he said.
In the past, a majority of the Hunterdon County's freeholder board has sided with Glynn, with Marcia Karrow casting lone votes against bridge widenings. She believes small projects can have far-ranging consequences.
"If you build it, they will come," she said. "My fellow freeholders say the traffic is already here, and it's true. But if you make it easier for people by widening bridges and roads, more will follow."
Recent spats over bridges in Delaware Township and East Amwell make Hunterdon the center of the one-lane controversy in New Jersey, but the issue has erupted in other locales. In all, there are 218 such bridges in the state. Most often, the battles are touched off by a county inspection that deems the bridge unsafe, although occasionally a wandering trucker forces the issue by overloading one of the spans.
"These battles are being fought all over the country," said James Corless, national campaign director for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, an anti-sprawl group. "Locals are in huge fights with state DOTs and engineers to not have their place look the same as everywhere else."
Groups like Scenic America, Smart Growth America and more local concerns like the Alliance for Historic Hamlets -- a Mountainville group whose acronym AHH! attempts to duplicate the reaction of first-time visitors -- say they too are concerned about safety. But they argue old ways can work in modern times, sometimes slowing traffic and making things safer.
State Department of Transportation officials, who recently vowed to attack internal policies that promote sprawl, agree there are alternatives to widening. They cited a 1996 Hunterdon County case in which a 130-year-old, one-lane bridge in Clinton was restored after county, local and state engineers supported the project.
"DOT does not try to force any particular design down anyone's throat," said DOT spokesman Micah Rasmussen. "If an inspection comes back unsafe, something has to be done. No one is saying it has to be X, Y or Z."
Glynn said that when state bond money is used, however, state engineers frown on designs that don't conform to guidelines set by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).
Assistant Morris County Engineer Surinder Thapar agreed that county engineers often look to federal or state guidelines in such cases. His office has widened at least three dozen bridges in the last decade, and he said there may be only a half dozen one-lane spans left in the county.
"Residents will say, 'This bridge is very historic. It's a rural neighborhood. It will increase traffic.' But we cannot get state and federal aid if we do not widen these bridges to certain standards," Thapar said.
After years of feuding with anti-sprawl groups, AASHTO has begun to promote "context-sensitive design" that takes into account the character of an area.
The association recently put out a separate manual for "low volume roads" that addresses one-lane bridges, but, Glynn said, most Hunterdon County spans are busier than the qualifying standard of 200 vehicles a day.
"In some cases, it is possible to preserve the character of a road or bridge and incorporate that in a redesign," said Jennifer Gavin, an AASHTO spokeswoman. "But these are very case-sensitive issues. One thing to keep in mind with one-lane bridges is safety."
In Somerset County, where 13 one-lane bridges remain, Rich Grocholski, county bridge engineer, said he makes every effort to restore narrow spans on local roads, and he cited several projects where that was done at greater cost. (The examples he cited cost roughly $1 million each, whereas Glynn is replacing bridges for about $500,000.)
In his 11 years with the county, Grocholski said, he has seen state attitudes soften when it comes to one-lane spans.
"You don't get a blank check, and you have to justify it from a safety perspective," he said. "But it's no longer opening a manual to a table and saying, 'It has to go.'"
In Mountainville, a tiny strip of historic businesses and houses that is part of Tewksbury Township, residents are fighting plans to widen two bridges from 16 to 26 feet. The county has deemed one bridge linking the hamlet to Oldwick unsafe and vowed to close it if locals don't accept the widening.
In the past, such drastic action has split opposition and led to acquiescence.
Shaun C. Van Doren, a Tewksbury committeeman and local historian, said county officials don't realize the harm such projects can do.
"I'm willing to go as far as these residents want to go in fighting this," he said. "We need to stand up for our way of life."
Steve Chambers covers land-use issues. He may be reached at schambers@starledger.com or (973) 392-1674.
Copyright 2002 The Star-Ledger.
New Jersey Conservation Foundation Options to Purchase 10,000-acre Pine Barrens Property
Largest Private Land Conservation Deal in New Jersey History
Far Hills, NJ November 18, 2002 New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF) has signed an option to purchase the nearly 10,000-acre DeMarco Farm, one of the largest privately owned tracts of land in New Jersey.
The spectacular property has 1,500 acres of reservoirs and thousands of acres of wetland and upland forests including 600 acres of Atlantic white cedar swamp. Fourteen tributaries of the West Branch of the Wading River originate on or pass through the property. The land has exceptional habitat for native and endangered species including bald eagles and the unique Pine Barrens tree frog. The farmed portion of the property includes 800 acres of cranberry bogs and 300 acres of blueberry fields.
The property is located in the "Heart of the Pine Barrens in Burlington County, surrounding the Village of Chatsworth in Woodland, Tabernacle and Bass River Townships. It connects five state-owned properties: Brendan Byrne State Forest (formerly Lebanon State Forest), Wharton State Forest, Bass River State Forest, Greenwood Wildlife Management Area and Penn State Forest.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to permanently preserve the heart of the Pine Barrens," said Michele Byers, Executive Director of NJCF and former Pine Barrens resident. "In the grand scheme of the efforts to protect the Pine Barrens, underway since the 1970's, the preservation of the DeMarco Farm will be one of the most important accomplishments in a generation.
NJCF is working closely with Garfield DeMarco, President of A.R. DeMarco Enterprises the farm,s owner to make the deal happen, but has only five months to raise the money needed to purchase the property.
To help ensure the property's preservation, the family has generously decided to give half the value of the property to NJCF as a gift. "My family and I want to see this unique and beautiful property preserved in its natural state for all the people of New Jersey, stated Mr. DeMarco. "I know my father, who loved this land every bit as much as I do, would want this as well, he continued. "We look forward to working with New Jersey Conservation Foundation to bring this project to a successful conclusion.
"Purchasing this property is a big challenge for NJCF, added Ms. Byers, "but the landowners have given New Jerseyans an amazing opportunity and we will do everything we can to raise the necessary funds.
Anyone interested in helping save this property can send a tax-deductible gift to NJCF's "Heart of the Pine Barrens Fund."
New Jersey Conservation Foundation is one of the nation,s premier land conservation organizations. Since 1960, it has protected tens of thousands of acres of New Jersey forest, farmland and open space from the Great Swamp, to Patriots, Path, to Wells Mills Park. NJCF has been in the forefront of land preservation policy, including historic laws protecting the Pine Barrens, farmland, water quality and every Green Acres open space initiative. For more information, call 1-888-LAND-SAVE, or visit their website at www.njconservation.org.
State reviews water management plan
Monday, November 25, 2002
By TRACEY L. REGAN
TRENTON - As one of the worst droughts on record recedes in memory amid a rain-drenched autumn, state environmental officials say they are still pushing for major changes in the way they manage the state's water supply.
Despite a slight drop in overall water use statewide over the course of the 1990s, driven by a steady decline in industrial consumption, increased use of potable water by the state's growing population has stretched supplies thin in some regions, officials say.
Much of the state's evolving management strategy is aimed not just at better control of water consumption in regions where it is rising quickly, but heading off shortages before they develop in times of drought.
The state will encourage water transfers among regions before reservoir levels drop precipitously, said Dennis Hart, the state's drought coordinator. The state also will ensure the equipment to make these transfers is working before they are needed.
Earlier this year, water officials were frustrated that they could not move as much water as they wanted from the central part of the state, which had abundant supplies, to the parched northeastern region, because a pumping station in Newark was in disrepair.
Water companies are reluctant to transfer water before they absolutely have to, Hart said, because it is costly to pump it. But he said the state may be able to find some funds to subsidize water transfers in a proposed sales tax on water that is now under consideration by the state Legislature.
The bill, which in its current version in the Senate would assess a 3-cent tax per 1,000 gallons of water, also would provide money to upgrade pumps and pipelines.
The state is scouting out new sources of water - or in some cases, reviving some old, abandoned ones, officials said. The state Department of Environmental Protection has asked Elizabethtown Water Co. to clean some contaminated groundwater in Springfield that the company had abandoned, which would allow it to pump an additional 4 million to 5 million gallons a day. The company is now assessing how much it will cost.
"There are areas where groundwater has been written off and areas where it shouldn't be," said Hart.
-- -- --
The state is also moving to reform how utilities get permits to use more water, by requiring them to better document their demand and to show they have a viable source before requesting a larger allocation.
The McGreevey administration has infuriated builders in some of the state's fastest growing areas, such as Atlantic County, by withholding water permits for suppliers who promised it to developers who had already gotten local construction approvals. Hundreds of builders and other construction industry contractors descended on the State House this fall to protest the administration's action and vow political payback come election time.
Statewide, water use declined from just over a trillion gallons a year in 1990 to about 980 billion in 1999. Karl Muessig, a state geologist, attributed the decline to more efficient industrial processes. Power companies, for example, are able to reuse a lot of the water they use for cooling.
"But potable consumption has gone up," he said.
Hart said some of the sharpest growth is being felt along the coast - from Monmouth to Cape May County - and in the Philadelphia suburbs in Gloucester and Camden counties.
"Some of these places are at their peak," he said.
-- -- --
The central part of the state is experiencing slower, but steady growth, said Henry Patterson, spokesman for the Elizabethtown Water Co., who said his company is anticipating growth of 1 to 1.5 percent per year until 2010.
But requests for water in the central part of the state, which has surplus capacity in its two major reservoirs, are under greater scrutiny as well.
The DEP told Elizabethtown it will not approve its request for an increase until the company assures the state it has contracted for enough water from the New Jersey Water Supply Authority, which operates the Spruce Run and Round Valley reservoirs in Hunterdon County.
Elizabethtown spokesman Henry Patterson called the DEP's request "prudent and reasonable" and said the company was complying.
But despite central New Jersey's large reservoirs, there are municipalities within the region that are experiencing shortfalls and moving to slow growth as a result.
Hopewell Township, for example, has lowered zoning densities in some of its sections where the dense bedrock prevents water from seeping down to the aquifer below and where it can be difficult for well-diggers to find the fracture that will allow them to reach groundwater. A local farm recently sunk a 560-foot well and came up virtually empty.
"It's scarce in some parts - it's not infinite," said Mayor Marylou Ferrara, who said a recent report on the town's geology "made us sit up and take notice."
Hart, the state's drought coordinator, said that in general the state does not have a good handle on well water use. His department only reviews developments with 50 or more wells.
Ferrara said the township was pleased Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to reuse a substantial amount of water at its facility. Mark Caine, an environmental, health and safety official for B-MS, said the company had reclaimed and reused a million gallons of nonpotable water over the course of about a year.
And then there is the occasional water company in the area with supplies to spare.
Trenton Waterworks, which draws water from the Delaware River, has recently agreed to provide Hamilton with 3 million gallons a day. The company already has an interconnection with its neighbor but can only transfer about 750,000 gallons a day at peak demand. Should it experience an outage, the plan would also allow Hamilton to return water.
"We're looking for customers," said Brent Cacallori, the superintendent of the system and the chief engineer. "We have lost two large customers - General Motors and Carter-Wallace - who accounted for just under 10 percent of our water usage."
Contact Tracey L. Regan at (609) 777-4465 or tregan@njtimes.com
Copyright 2002 The Times.
Farm to be preserved along scenic byway
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
DELAWARE TOWNSHIP - Plans to spend $1.98 million to preserve a 221-acre farm along Route 29 near Bull's Island State Park were announced yesterday.
State Transportation Commissioner Jamie Fox, state Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell and Rep. Rush Holt, D-Hopewell Township, hailed the plan to preserve the Shuck farm off Federal Twist Road as key to preserving the riverside highway.
Route 29 was nominated as the state's first scenic byway under a federal program to preserve scenic corridors. The highway, about 35 miles long, runs from Trenton to Frenchtown.
"It is important that we preserve and protect open space along this wonderful highway corridor," Fox said. "The property we are acquiring buffers the Delaware River and will be a tremendous addition to Bull's Island recreation area and the Route 29 Scenic Byway."
Campbell said the property was among the last developable parcels in what is called the Delaware River Bluffs Corridor, which includes the Delaware & Raritan Canal.
Funding for the purchase included $1 million from the Federal Scenic Byways program, with the rest coming from the state Green Acres and Garden State Preservation Trust programs.
The U.S. Transportation Department recognizes National Scenic Byways by their archaeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational and scenic qualities. The nation has 72 scenic byways in 32 states.
Copyright 2002 The Times.
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
By KAREN AYRES
WEST WINDSOR - With nearly half of the town preserved as open space, there can be little debate that West Windsor is a green town.
But state environmental agencies are set to put that in writing tonight when West Windsor is officially honored with the first "Green Town" award for its work in protecting the environment.
Leaders of the Environmental Education Fund and the New Jersey Environmental Lobby will present the award to Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh at 8 p.m. during a public ceremony at the municipal building.
"We chose West Windsor mainly because of the amazing job they've done preserving open space," said Eileen Hogan, president of the Environmental Education Fund. "They've done a lot of creative things with preserving land."
The two groups set up the award to honor local towns for their efforts to improve air and water quality in New Jersey, Hogan said.
The groups want to encourage towns to have master plans and zoning ordinances that support the environmental aspects of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.
West Windsor has preserved nearly 47 percent of its land through farmland preservation, dedicated parkland and open space funds.
"(The award) recognizes the fact that we as a council have been actively pursuing open space parcels that have been under threat of development by developers," said Jackie Alberts, a township council member who sits on the Open Space Utilization Task Force. "We have looked at ways to incorporate environmentally friendly designs into our site plans."
The town taxes residents seven cents per $100 of assessed property value to be used for open space preservation, or about $175 a year for someone with a house valued at the township average of $250,000.
"The residents in West Windsor want environmental concerns to be included in land use planning," Hsueh said.
The town also has a Shade Tree Committee and a Storm Water Management Committee as well as several environmental plans in place.
Hogan said West Windsor was chosen to receive the award among only a few competitors this year, but the two groups hope more towns will apply next year. To qualify for the award, towns must answer 20 questions about environmental plans that can be found on www.njenvironment.org.
"We're hoping some of the more urbanized towns will apply," Hogan said. "Even if they don't have open space to preserve, there are a lot of things they can do to preserve the environment."
Copyright 2002 The Times.
Keep the promise of the Clean Water Act
By Amy Goldsmith
Monday, October 21, 2002
As we get ready to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act this month, we are at the most important moment since the law was passed. With Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman weakening the Clean Water Act nationwide, the promising first steps by the McGreevey Administration have become much more important and need to be followed up with additional measures.
Before the Clean Water Act passed Congress in 1972, the Passaic River caught on fire and was an open sewer. Since then, we have made progress, but many New Jerseyans are waiting for the act's promises to be kept. The goals of the federal Clean Water Act were to return 100 percent of the nation's waters to fishable and swimmable conditions by 1983 and eliminate all water pollution by 1985. Thirty years later less than 15 percent of New Jersey's waterways meet these goals and more than 60 percent of our waterways are too polluted with phosphorus from sewer plants and animal waste.
According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, every waterway in New Jersey is threatened by the overdevelopment that accompanies sprawl. Furthermore, the Clean Water Act mandated that every polluted waterway have a cleanup plan in place by 1979. Today, 1,042 New Jersey waterways require such plans, yet currently no New Jersey waterway has an adequate one.
That's what makes Whitman's record so disappointing. While Governor, she weakened critical Clean Water Act protections, cut funding, reduced enforcement, and failed to clean-up the state's most polluted waters. Now as federal administrator, she is trying to do to the nation what she did to New Jersey -- weakening the Clean Water Act that she is supposed to be enforcing.
Two months ago, Whitman released a rule proposal that would eliminate needed clean-ups by redefining certain polluted waters as "clean", weaken standards to reduce the level of clean-ups for other polluted waters, allow polluters to increase their amount of discharge based on speculative, unenforceable reductions from sprawl runoff, permit pollution trading based on the honor system that allows polluters to skirt the Clean Water Act without EPA oversight, and cut funding for enforcement at EPA.
Since we can no longer count on a strong federal backstop, the actions of the McGreevey Administration have become that much more important. Fortunately, while critical details remain to be implemented and the strong opposition from those that benefit from sprawl and water pollution must be countered, Governor McGreevey is off to a promising start.
In a difficult fiscal climate, Governor McGreevey has restored the vigor and funding to the DEP's enforcement program, proposed stronger standards to protect the state's pristine waters, and made the strongest commitment yet to cleaning up the state's polluted waters. For example, the Governor has announced a major shift in policy to increase protections for the state's most important water supplies to ensure that their water quality is maintained.
However, special interests are making a concerted effort to stop this promising start in its tracks. We hope that large development projects like Windy Acres and Milligan Farms in Hunterdon County do not undercut the Governor's plans by building two new sewer plants that would dump directly into two of the waterways he has designated for increased protections. This is a game of beat the clock will DEP permit the new sewer plants before the Governor's plan goes into effect? Furthermore, significant clean-ups and enforcement are lacking on the most important waterways, such as the Passaic River with its phosphorus problem.
Sprawl and overdevelopment are not only paving over our countryside, but they make our water quality and our droughts worse. Buildings and pavement stop rain from filtering through the ground -- a process that removes pollutants and recharges water supplies. Especially during dry periods, this threatens the quality and supply of groundwater and makes our rivers and streams too low and too dirty to take drinking water from too often.
Clearly, there is much to be done before the goals of the Clean Water Act have been met in New Jersey. Now is not the time for photo ops. It is the time for Whitman to rethink her policies and for the McGreevey Administration to follow through on its promising initiatives.
The public deserves, expects and demands no less.
Copyright 2001, The Star-Ledger
Amy Goldsmith is the director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. She wrote this article in conjunction with Douglas O'Malley, the clean water associate at the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, and Dennis Schvejda, conservation director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
DEP's computer map shows pollution endangering water wells
Thursday, September 26, 2002
BY ANTHONY S. TWYMAN
Star-Ledger StaffState officials yesterday unveiled a sophisticated Internet computer mapping program that shows how close contaminated sites are to public drinking water wells, as well as a wealth of other environmental information about New Jersey.
Called "i-Map," the project is the first of its kind in the nation, according to state and federal officials. A major goal of the project is to help state and municipal officials take measures, such as changing zoning rules and preserving open space, to protect the state's 2,425 public drinking water wells.
For the first time, people can go to one central source to find information about how much sewer plants and factories discharge into rivers and streams, the amount of water and air pollution coming from industries, and the types of environmental violations brought against companies. Previously, people would have had to gather this information on a case-by-case basis, one site at a time.
Department of Environmental Protection officials rolled out the first phase of the project yesterday in Trenton. The second phase, adding more data, will be released next spring.
"We want the public to be aware of and to participate in environmental planning to help them make scientifically sound decisions," said DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell.
The new computer program includes more than 30 maps showing everything from roads and legislative district boundaries to the locations of toxic sites, public drinking water wells, endangered species and forests.
Environmentalists have taken a particular interest in the program's ability to show the proximity of contaminated sites to public drinking water wells. "We have been trying to get this kind of information for the past five years," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.
The "i-Map" program can generate colored circles showing the area from which a well draws its water, and how long it would take for any pollution that might leak from a given site to taint a public water supply.
For instance, the maps show that two wells in Netcong and one in Roxbury that are run by the Netcong Water Department are within 1,600 feet of severely contaminated groundwater at the Compac Corp., Netcong Borough Circle and the closed Fenimore public landfill.
But the DEP maps do not show whether pollutants from contaminated sites have actually seeped into wells. DEP officials hope by spring to have completed a study that will show which wells are at risk.
State officials and water suppliers stress that wells are routinely tested for contamination and are closed if they become polluted.
"We believe (the) drinking water is safe," said Campbell, saying there are "rigorous testing" and "safeguards" in place.
Bob Olivo, Netcong's superintendent of public works, said the water the town takes from the three wells near contaminated sites is safe to drink. "Our wells are tested annually," Olivo said. "We do the testing that is required by the DEP."
Environmentalists, however, have doubts about the rigorousness of the state-required testing and the DEP's enforcement of federal safe drinking water laws. They fear that toxic chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants from lawns, farms, underground storage tanks, municipal landfills and steel drums stored on old industrial sites may be seeping into the groundwater that supplies the public. Nearly 42 percent of New Jersey residents rely on groundwater sources for their drinking water.
"The fact that these sites are so nearby means we're likely to find out many wells are contaminated," said Dena Mottola, acting director of the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group's citizen lobby.
Statewide, the map shows more than 12,000 contaminated sites, more than 2,000 of which are severely polluted and located near wells.
The DEP data show:
* Ninety-two of the state's most severely contaminated sites are located close enough to public wells that, if pollution leaked out, it could reach the well within two years.
* Fifteen towns in seven counties have 10 or more contaminated sites that could threaten wells within two years if pollution reached the groundwater.
* The counties of Morris and Bergen have the most severely contaminated sites (16) that could threaten a well within two years, followed by Union (nine), Passaic (eight) and Sussex (seven). Hunterdon and Essex each have six.
Under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, operators of public wells must test them for about 90 pollutants and substances. Contaminated wells must be closed or have treatment systems installed, said DEP spokesman Fred Mumford. In some cases, the DEP also may allow the well operator to correct a contamination problem by blending water from the dirty well with clean water from another source.
The i-Map program can be found on the DEP's Web site (www.nj.gov/dep). Anthony S. Twyman covers the environment. He can be reached at atwyman@starledger.com.
Copyright 2002 The Star-Ledger
D&R panel approves Toll recreation area
By: David Campbell , Staff Writer 09/20/2002
Commission reaches compromise with West Windsor over a waiver for stream-corridor intrusion.
The Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission reached a compromise Wednesday with West Windsor Township officials over a waiver for stream-corridor intrusion by Toll Brothers' Estates at Princeton Junction housing development off Bear Brook Road.
The township had sought a 24-space parking lot, basketball court, tot-lot playground and playing fields for the controversial development as one of the many conditions of approval. Toll Brothers had agreed to provide them.
But Canal Commission officials recommended against them due to concerns over encroachment into the commission-protected stream corridor that drains into the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park, said commission Executive Director James Amon.
On Wednesday, West Windsor Planning Board attorney Gerald Muller and township landscape architect Dan Dobromilsky appeared before the commission to make their case for the