Month: February 2019

(Making) Room for the River: Applying Dutch River Management to the Raritan

Article and images (except as noted) by Sanja Martic, Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture Graduate Student.

“Man wants to take the river’s natural storage reservoir and make no compensation for it. The river contends it is against Natural Law and cannot be done. The river is right.”
James P. Kemper, New Orleans, 1927.



The Dutch Room for the River Program (RfR) was conceived in 2007 as an integrated river basin management strategy for the low-lying flood prone and densely populated areas of the Netherlands. As part of this Program, water management is conducted via a specialized regional “Water Board,” working in partnership with the Dutch National Ministry and the Ministries for Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Through RfR the Dutch Water Board takes a four-pronged approach to water management. The four key characteristics of the RfR approach include: 1) large scale river region landscape architectural design thinking; 2) a focus on collaboration, with landscape architecture playing a facilitating role; 3) considering the landscape as a system of layers; and 4) anticipating that natural processes will change and enhance the design over time.

As in the Netherlands, significant portions of New Jersey’s Lower Raritan River are in low-lying densely populated areas. Flood protection is of paramount importance and a matter of human safety and economic security. However, the Home Rule focus of New Jersey’s local governance limits the potential for thinking in a landscape context, no comparable “Water Board” serves as coordinating entity for water management, flood control prioritizes human land use layers, and engineering controls trump considerations of natural hydrological processes and flows. There is much to learn from the Dutch RfR example. In what follows we provide background information on RfR, and consider the Dutch Water Management approach in the context of New Jersey’s Raritan River and Lower Raritan Watershed.

Historic Approach to River Basin Management

In riverine areas around the world, the industrial revolution demanded capitalization of the river’s territory and its water. As a result, many river basins were heavily engineered: rivers streamlined, river basins minimized, and creeks and small streams culverted or replaced by canals[1]. These practices, in combination with development over time, resulted in floodplains that restricted the river and required repeated heightening of flood defenses[2]. There was no appreciation for the river ecosystems, and water was seen as a threat and as something that needed to be controlled. Over time, conflicts arose regarding use of the floodplain and the its water. And the Industrial Revolution and subsequent development left behind a lasting pollution legacy: abandoned infrastructure and degraded water and soil quality. Meanwhile, the expanding population’s need for potable water and space for a safe habitation increased, causing a decline in the river basin surface. In recent years, rising intensity and quantity of extreme precipitation events associated with a changing climate, coupled with increase of the impervious surface cover, further complicate water management issues.

Room for the River (RfR) Emergence and Approach

In the Netherlands, traditional water management methods were challenged following destructive floods in 1995, caused by record extreme precipitation events. It was clear that new flood levels required a different approach towards river management. Different approaches to water management call for different methods: many rely heavily on engineering while others emphasize a more natural approach. Room for the River Program (RfR) finds a middle ground. Instead of gradually reducing the area that rivers occupy, this approach allows the river to expand over a larger territory[3]. RfR brings together the worlds of water management and spatial planning, engineering and ecology. Tools are varied and include dredging at one extreme, and measuring spatial quality on the other, and they are put into service of two main objectives: improving safety by reducing flooding of riverine areas, and “contributing to the improvement of spatial quality of the riverine area”[4]. Although hard to quantify, this second goal is particularly interesting from the landscape architecture perspective as it considers quality of the space.

Spatial quality within the RfR approach is defined as “a property of the resulting landscape after a plan has been implemented.”[5] A good design is further judged by three criteria: hydraulic effectiveness, ecological robustness and cultural meaning and aesthetics. Cultural meaning and aesthetics criteria call for enhancing the scenic beauty, tailored to a range of sites that could be classified as natural, urban or countryside. Ecological robustness endorses designs that are long lasting, self-sustained, build upon natural processes, and are low maintenance. This is achieved through combining natural hydrology with morphological and biotic processes to achieve stability in riverbed and floodplain.[6] This means that plans have to be functional in the case of floods, but at other times must accommodate livability, wildlife habitats and areas usable as a public good. Design is informal and natural while providing maximum access for recreation, with spaces intended to reveal the spirit of each individual site of intervention.

Room for the River (RfR) Implementation and Practical Measures

In the Dutch model, spatial quality assessment requires development of a special Q-team (quality team) composed of members from different but complimentary disciplinary backgrounds. The Q-team’s role is to produce an independent recommendation on enhancing spatial quality through coaching designers and planners, peer review of the designs and plans, and regular communication to the Ministries of Transportation, Public Works and Water Management[7]. This calls for significant transdisciplinary cooperation between planning and design, with an equal role for the landscape architect, urban planner, river engineer, ecologist and physical geographer. Practical measures (Figure 1) are applicable at large scale and fall into three categories ranked by complexity of integration of flood risk measures with spatial measures. These categories include technical measures (deepening the river bed, lowering groynes, strengthening dikes), measures within the banks (lowering the floodplains, removing obstacles), and measures beyond the banks (high-water channel building, dike relocation, water storage). In addition to evaluating project’s outcome, the team also evaluates the quality of the integrative collaborative design process.

Figure 1: Different types of measures in the RfR program
Source: Practical Measures, from Room for the River Fact Sheet

Precedent for RfR in the United States

The RfR approach is not entirely new to the United States. An early similar effort was forwarded in New Orleans in 1927, following devastating flooding events in the Mississippi River delta. Like the Dutch who relied on dikes for flood protection, the Mississippi delta community relied on constant raising and enforcing levees, increasingly restricting the surface size of the natural flood plain. The 1927 flood prompted a reevaluation of the Mississippi River management approach. Official Congressional hearings were held and involved the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Mississippi River Commission and expert witnesses such as Gifford Pinchot[8]. Discussion revolved around engineered control of the river proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and an approach in which nature would be allowed more leeway[9] supported by Pinchot, James Kemper and others. The latter view resembles the RfR approach as it calls for allowing more room for the river through widening the flood plain.

RfR Methodology

1. Large-Scale Design (Entire river region)

The large scale landscape architectural design approach considers “not only detailing of small-scale elements, but also at the scale of the river system as a whole”. [10]

2. Collaboration

The landscape architect plays a central role of coordinator between planners, architects and other partners. Fliervoet and Den Born studied and evaluated the RfR’s collaborative process from a stakeholders’ perspective. They concluded that the success of the approach is highly dependent on the cooperation and collaboration of multiple entities occupying the watershed with emphasis on the local knowledge. The biggest obstacles to collaboration stated by the participants, were the lack of an overarching, integrated maintenance vision and a lack of coordination between the authorities.[11]

3. Considering the Landscape as a system of layers

o        Basis of Landscape (soil, water, ecosystems)

o        Network Layer (roads, waterways energy infrastructure)

o        Occupation and Land Use (living, working, recreation)

o        Time Layer (all layers develop within their own time scale)

4. Creating Conditions: Responding to natural processes

Natural processes are expected to change and enhance design over time.

Applying the RfR Methodology to the Raritan

Large-scale Design of the Raritan River Floodplain and Regional Network

The first characteristic, the large scale of design as applied to the Lower Raritan, requires creating a comprehensive masterplan with projects spanning the entire Raritan watershed. RfR site plans would become small parts of a large Raritan Watershed Masterplan. The masterplan would be guided by a comprehensive vision of integrated water management, with a regional greenway connection as an integral part. Directly connecting the City of New Brunswick to the greenway network would be a key component of the masterplan, as New Brunswick is the largest settlement on the banks of the Raritan River. Collaboration between many governing bodies is essential. At the federal level the governing bodies to involve include USACE, USCG and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. At a state level governing bodies to involve include NJDOT, NJDEP and Land Use Regulations and Ecological Services Field Office. Regionally the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission and counties such as Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon and others should be involved. At the local level the municipalities along the Raritan River banks including New Brunswick, Piscataway, Franklin Township etc. would require representation.

Large scale design requires examination of large-scale network connections. Analysis in the Raritan River context reveals several greenway network opportunities (Figure 2). Metropolitan areas of New York City and Washington D.C. are roughly framed by the Appalachian Trail to the North and the proposed alignment of the East Coast Greenway to the South. They are further enclosed by the major East Coast rivers that bisect the Trail and the Greenway on their way to the Atlantic Ocean. The Hudson River Valley to the East, the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the west all form a regional trail system matrix. This blue and green matrix provides unique opportunities for cross connections of the corridors and interactions with nature and culture to one of the world’s densest contiguous urban populations.

The East Coast Greenway is an aspiring walking and biking route stretching the length of the US East Coast with southern terminus in Key West, Florida and northern Maine. Once actualized, the East Coast Greenway will be 3000 miles long and epitomize the bond between communities and nature by connecting the exist green open space along its route into a unique linear corridor. Initiated in 1991, with forming of the East Coast Greenway Alliance, the vision of Greenway designers, “represents a commitment to public health, environmental sustainability, economic development, and civic engagement”[12].

The existing Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which partially passes along New Jersey’s northern border, is currently the longest hiking footpath in the world at 2190 miles long[13]. It was first proposed by a regional planner Benton MacKaye in a 1921 document titled “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning”.  MacKaye’s vision initiated the idea of land preservation for the purposes of recreation and conservation. The idea started to materialize in 1925 and was actualized in 2014 when the last stretch of the Trail was formally acquired and protected.  Today, the trail is visited by over 3 million visitors a year as it bisects fourteen US States from Georgia to Maine.[14]

The East Coast Greenway’s proposed alignment crosses the narrow waist of New Jersey using the D&R Canal Park as a major junction. Canal Park’s Masterplan recognizes the most important quality possessed by this linear park to be the role it can perform as a connector. Canal Park no longer links New York City and Philadelphia, but it does join central New Jersey communities, different land forms and different kinds of natural areas, and connects New Jersey with its heritage[15]. Extending the Canal’s connection back into the city of New Brunswick would align with the Canal Commission’s Masterplan and benefit New Brunswick’s future development.

The Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor runs along the Delaware River on the Pennsylvania side, parallel to the D&R Canal Park. It is an indirect connection between the proposed East Coast Greenway, through the D&R Canal Park to the Appalachian Trail. It is also an example of a linear park run by a nonprofit organization, while Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is a linear park that is part of the National Park system. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is another significant connector between the Appalachian Trail and the East Coast Greenway close to a major metropolitan area.

When the Delaware and Raritan Canal was built in the 1930s it permanently linked the Delaware and Raritan watersheds, creating opportunities for connection. Since that time, construction of Route 18 through New Brunswick, which established a several mile stretch of roadway immediately adjacent to the Raritan, severed this historic network connection, in particular in the area between Buccleuch Park and the Landing Lane Bridge. Today, the City of New Brunswick’s unique geographic position could once again benefit future development should access impediments to the D&R Canal Park be removed, resulting in expanded access to not only Canal Park but regional networks like the East Coast Greenway. There would be many mutual gains: the local community would have better access to nature and everyday recreation and day-hiking without having to drive to the trail. New Brunswick’s rich local history would add to the richness of the trail’s experience. The local economy would benefit from hiking and biking traffic generated by the Greenway. Finally, being a part of the future East Coast Greenway’s shared vision could be an invigorating driver of the nature stewardship and future community and economic development.

Figure 2: East Coast Greenway Network Opportunities

Collaboration of Local, Regional, National and State Partners

Collaboration and coordination, conducted by a landscape architect, may include working with a variety of professional partners on a local level. In addition to planners and architects, other professions to engage include social scientists, geographers, ecologists, river engineers, biologists, historians, archeologists and civil engineers.

Considering the Raritan River Floodplain and Watershed Landscape as a system of layers

The RfR “system of layers” approach consists of a base layer, network layer, potential for use layer and time layer (Figure 3). Layers provide a basis for site evaluation within the Lower Raritan. Expanding the original RfR methodology, we have conceived of each of the four categories of layers as worth 25 points for a total of a 100-point evaluation system. The lower the score for specific site, the better the opportunity for enhancing it.

Figure 3: Adopted Diagram of Layers of Landscape

For example, considering New Brunswick in relation to the regional greenway network, the four areas identified as having the best opportunity for creating connections between the New Brunswick and regional greenways are the Key Connector Streets (Urban Core Green and Blue Corridors), Waterfront Access Points, Raritan Bike Path, and the “D&R Canal Link” (Figure 4). These] specific sites should then be evaluated for their soil, water and air quality within the base layer, and for the existing roads, railroads, bridges/tunnels, walking and biking paths and green networks within the network layer. The Network Layer evaluates the existing networks presence and connectivity. Points (0-5) are given for the presence of the networks within the site and more points for their current connectivity. All the sites have a presence of at least one network, however in some cases those networks are enhancing and in others reducing walking and biking connectivity. Increasing connectivity becomes a goal for this layer.

Figure 4: Simplified Connections Diagram

The Base Layer evaluates the soil, water, air, plant and animal life conditions of the landscape. 0-5 points for soil quality are allocated depending on its permeability as well as its ability to support life. In the urban environment soil is often covered by pervious surface or is heavily compacted resulting in a low rating. Water movement is evaluated based on the speed of its movement within the site. Faster movement (poor infiltration) is rated lower. Water quality is associated with the ability of site to treat the stormwater runoff. Water that leaves the site cleaner results in higher points. Air quality depends on the site’s micro location. Sites near major roads with little vegetation are rated lower. Finally, existence of plant and animal life is rated depending on a level of presence. Based on the rating, design goals that emerge are: increasing surface permeability, slowing down runoff by retaining water in the landscape for longer periods, decreasing soil compaction, and creating conditions that support more plant and animal life.

Our addition to the methodology also includes expansion of the “potential for use layer” by which each of these sites are evaluated for their potential to support any of 25 different activities that could take place within the area once it is redesigned. The Potential for Use Layer allocates one point for each activity that can currently take place within an area. The goal for this layer becomes increasing the number of future potential use of the space.

Finally, the time layer evaluates presence of historic and cultural artifacts on one end and a potential for future ecosystem health improvement on the other. Sites that contain historic and cultural artifacts are rated higher, as well as the sites that will be able to, over time, enhance the ecosystem health. Ecosystem health is prioritized over the existence of historic and cultural artifact. For example, a city street has less potential for the improvement of the future ecosystem health than the river bank.


Figure 5:  Proposed Connections Diagram

The redesign of the existing key connector streets within the City of New Brunswick enhances the biking and walking experience, while leading to the waterfront access points. Commercial and Joyce Kilmer Avenues are green corridors, chosen for their proximity to the local schools, green open space, highest population density and wide traffic lanes. These two thoroughfares have a great potential for “road diet” interventions, such as narrowing traffic lanes and adding bumpouts at street crossings in order to calm traffic and thus enhance safety of pedestrian and bicyclists. They would further create opportunities for bringing nature closer to the local communities by becoming way finders for the Raritan River as well as the green corridors with more pervious surface and vegetation (Figure 5).

Existing Roadway Surface
Bike lanes, pervious surface

Figure 6: Green Corridor Intervention
Source: Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Guide

Route 27 or French Street and Hamilton Street are already main routes of access that are further enhanced by adding new and improving existing bike lanes, and improving pedestrian experience by adding bump outs and lowering curbs. Similar interventions could be applied outside of the immediate study area. Franklin Township’s Franklin Boulevard is the next such opportunity. The existing Mile Run stream corridor, in conjunction with the key connector streets, forms a matrix of river connections. The Mile Run stream corridor is now accessible through this matrix, offering further opportunities for engagement with water and nature.

Figure 7: Bumpouts add sidewalk space, provide space for rain gardens, bike parking, etc. and shorten crossing distance. Minimum width lanes slow traffic.

Source: “Main Street: When a Highway Runs Through it”, Oregon Downtown Development Association

Access to the waterfront is strengthened using various traffic calming techniques such as raised, textured crossings, lowered speed limit and narrowed traffic lanes. These approaches ensure safety and an enhanced pedestrian experience. Redesigning the Raritan bike path by adding access points, widening its surface, and adding small, localized interventions helps create a sense of place and wayfinding. Materials and forms chosen for intervention help to further connect community to the unique industrial and postindustrial history and ecology of the place. Finally, the “Canal Link” links fragmented biking and walking paths ending within the area of the River Road, Landing Lane, Buccleuch Park and Spillway, through an elevated walkway bridging the impediments. This walkway becomes the final interlocking link restoring connection to the D&R Canal Park, East Coast Greenway and the Raritan.

A final key characteristic of the RfR program requires considering how including natural change over time can be integrated in the designed system, so that it could start functioning as a natural system. Within the landscape architecture field, time is always an important element considered in designing a landscape. The question: “How will a landscape change throughout the years?” is a core design consideration. However, change is usually considered as it relates to human use and needs. In the RfR case the emphasis is on the health of the entire ecosystem, and the ability of landscape to be “managed” by natural processes, thus making it self-sustained and supportive for all living beings. Choices of materials and forms should be made considering this final concern.[


[1]  Wiering and Arts, p 330.  

[2]  Rijke et al., “Room for the River.”, p 369.

[3] Rijke et al., “Room for the River.”, p. 369.

[4] Rijke et al., “Room for the River.”, p 369.

[5] Klijn et al., “Design Quality of Room-for-the-River Measures in the Netherlands.”, p 291.

[6] Klijn et al., p 292.

[7] Klijn et al., “Design Quality of Room-for-the-River Measures in the Netherlands.”, p 289.

[8] Ari Kelman, A River and Its City, p 190.

[9] Ari Kelman, A River and Its City, p 190.

[10] Way, River Cities, City Rivers, p 376.

[11] Fliervoet, van den Born, and Meijerink, “A Stakeholder’s Evaluation of Collaborative Processes for Maintaining    Multi-Functional Floodplains.”,p 185.

[12] https://www.greenway.org/about/the-east-coast-greenway, East Coast Greenway Alliance, 2018

[13]http://www.appalachiantrail.org/home/about-us/media-room, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, 2018

[14] http://www.appalachiantrail.org/home/about-us/history, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, 2018

[15] D&R Canal Park Revised Masterplan 1988, p 32.


The Problem of “Hidden” streams

The LRWP is often asked to identify top environmental issues facing our Central Jersey watershed communities, and every year we develop a “Top 10” list of concerns. Through 2019 we will feature one concern a month on our website, exploring that issue (and potential solutions) in more detail. This month we consider the problems caused by culverting, piping, developing over or otherwise “hiding” our streams, and provide strategies through which we can find them again. 

The Lower Raritan Watershed is full of ghost streams. Entrepreneurs, town councils, industry, and home owners have long buried streams to develop their land and businesses, to expand their towns, to build their homes, and to address public health concerns. The result is centuries of piping, culverting, construction, and development that have hidden the vast majority of streams and rivers in our urban landscape.


“Lower Raritan Change: 1893-1995”
This graphic show gradual encroachment of development and associated disappearance of tributaries to the South River and Raritan River over a period of approximately 100 years.
Sanja Martic, 2017.

The impact of “hiding” so many of our streams is devastating. Lower Raritan communities are alienated from our waterways and historic ecologies, habitats are degraded, water quality is compromised, and stormwater runoff and flooding intensify. Not only in the Lower Raritan, but throughout the United States and globally, these impacts are most acutely felt in areas with low socioeconomic status and vulnerable populations. In the face of climate change and increased precipitation and runoff, these communities bear disproportionate risk and adaptive burden.

We know that healthy, open streams play an important role in stormwater management. In a healthy stream, stormwater gets absorbed and gradually released by soil and plants. An open stream not only slows and controls stormwater surge, it also provides habitat for wildlife, and provides the aesthetic benefits of cool spaces and greenery.


A Stream (Mile Run Brook) Runs Under It
Flooding on Joyce Kilmer Avenue at the Mile Run Brook culvert strands students at New Brunswick’s Greater Brunswick Charter School Photo: Charlie Kratovil, 2016

What is a culvert? A culvert is a tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road or railroad. Stagnant water in Mile Run Brook under New Brunswick’s Hamilton Street culvert.
Photo: Heather Fenyk, 2019

Streams, especially small ones, also play an important role in improving water quality. A healthy stream ecosystem can remove excess nutrients, sediment, and other contaminants from water before it flows into our Rivers, Bays or Oceans. Recent research by the Environmental Protection Agency found that nitrates—nutrients that can become pollutants—travel on average 18 times further in buried urban streams than they do in open streams before they are taken out of the water column. This means that in areas with many buried streams like the Lower Raritan Watershed, larger water bodies including Raritan River and Raritan Bay receive more pollutants than if the waterways upstream were open and healthy and serving to filter pollutants as stormwater runoff travels its course.


Except for the smallest tributary, all branches of Mill Brook first meet daylight at the end of concrete pipes. Outfalls of, from left to right, Mill Brook’s main branch, the South Tributary, the North Tributary, and the Kilmer Tributary (Highland Park and Edison). These photos are part of Susan Edmunds’s Storymap: “Mill Brook: A Portrait of an Urban Stream

Of course the best first action with respect to keeping streams healthy is to avoid culverting, piping, constructing over or otherwise developing them. However, in already heavily developed areas like the Lower Raritan Watershed, much damage has already been done. In some of our Lower Raritan towns more than 50% of surfaces are paved over, including all waterways that were in evidence on maps from the 1800s.


Change in time in impervious cover in the Lower Raritan Watershed from 1995-2012

Walk down most any of our main streets and you are likely to “walk on water” without any awareness of what is beneath your feet. If you pay careful attention however, as students did during our 2018 summer camp, you can hear the streams and trace their course, even if you cannot actually see them. Learning about our landscape, and “finding” our hidden streams is the next best action to take in protecting them.

Lazos America Unida/LRWP Summer Camp looks for the buried Lyell’s Brook

Learning to decipher our landscape, and trying to “find” our hidden streams are central to the LRWP’s new #lookfortheriver campaign.

The LRWP is building the #lookfortheriver campaign to bring attention to the problems of “hiding” or disappearing our streams, and to identify ways of finding them again. In addition to teaching folks about the landscape in fun ways, this involves collecting stories by volunteers and contributors who take the time observe and document their area streams, and who highlight the great benefits of landscape connectivity. Joe Mish’s most recent February essay is a great example: Along the South Branch Connected. Margo Persin’s year of blog post’s about Ambrose Brook is another.

#lookfortheriver activities include our newly launched “Watershed Highlights and Hidden Streams: Walking Tours of the Lower Raritan Watershed,” to be led by Rutgers Professor and LRWP Board Member David Tulloch. These walks will look at landscape connections to our waterways and what this means. The series kicks off on Sunday March 16 close to the Rutgers campus, with exploration of the connections between Buell Brook and the Raritan, connecting Johnson Park and the historic Raritan Landing with the Eco Preserve.

#lookfortheriver includes working with volunteers to understand how our landscape works, where it doesn’t, and how to fix the problems we observe. Susan Edmunds’s research into the history of Mill Brook, and her careful study and documentation of the stream (see her online Storymap Mill Brook: A Portrait of an Urban Stream) lends tremendous insight into landscape functions of a relatively forgotten stream. Susan will present on this project in at the Highland Park public library on Sunday March 24. Joining Susan will be Rutgers student Jillian Dorsey, who will highlight findings from her thesis research on Mill Brook that shows how property owners can protect their urban streams. We hope these efforts will further mobilize municipal action to restore local streams, and that they will inspire homeowners in proper maintenance of waterway-adjacent homes. In fact, this work has already inspired the Highland Park Council to partner with the LRWP for a multi-site clean-up of Mill Brook, scheduled for Sunday May 12 – please save the date!

#lookfortheriver also includes ambitious proposals to “daylight” local streams. One such proposal is for New Brunswick’s Lyell’s Brook Green Infrastructure Landscape Corridor.

The legacy of development, culverting and piping that has hidden our streams exacerbates flooding and pollution transfer. It has disconnected us from our waterways and from our land. This is disastrous for our communities, but we are learning new ways “find” our streams again and fix these problems. Join us in online to discussions, at meetings, or for our “Hidden Streams Walking Tours”. Or simply start exploring the watershed on your own. Give close attention to landscape cues – the sound of rushing water in a storm sewer, collections of sediment and debris in low lying areas, and dense growth of trees and weeds. In this way we connect to our landscape and waterways, imagine their past, and can begin to plan for a future of “finding” and restoring them.

Please join us as we #lookfortheriver

Meet Mill Brook Streamkeeper Susan Edmunds!

Article by LRWP Raritan Scholar Intern Daniel Cohen

Highland Park resident Susan Edmunds is the first “Streamkeeper” for the Mill Brook, a tributary of the Lower Raritan Watershed.

LRWP Streamkeeper Susan Edmunds, a 30 year resident of Highland Park, lives adjacent to a tributary of the Raritan River called Mill Brook. During the time Susan has lived alongside the Mill Brook, she has become committed to the environmental sustainability of this stream. As part of a Rutgers Environmental Stewards program internship, conducted with the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership, Susan documented the condition of the Mill Brook through historical research and photography, synthesizing this information in an online “storymap” titled Mill Brook: Portrait of an Urban Stream.

Susan Edmunds will give a public presentation on “Mill Brook, a Tributary of the Raritan River Running through Edison and Highland Park” March 24, 2019, 2-4 PM at the Highland Park Public Library

Susan is a strong advocate for what she terms “a new understanding” by all stakeholders in order to remedy the serious threats which endanger the environmental viability of the stream. I walked along the waterway with her as she highlighted several major environmental challenges facing Mill Brook. These include illegal dumping of commercial and residential trash, and wash off of chemical herbicides and fertilizers from nearby lawns into the stream. This wash off is part of what is called “non-point source pollution,” and includes not just herbicides and fertilizers, but also animal waste, motor vehicle oil and other chemicals.

As we continued walking downstream, Susan told me that in recent years Mill Brook has experienced intensified erosion and flooding events. She pointed out the proliferation of driveways, parking lots, and walls — what is known as impervious surfaces — that prevent the natural absorption of rainwater into the soil and results in “stormwater runoff.” She then explained how excessive amounts of stormwater runoff exacerbates erosion of lawns and damage to residential structures, and also carries downstream pollution in the form of silt and gravel and non-point pollution.

Even before becoming part of the LRWP’s inaugural team of Streamkeepers, Susan has long been committed to restoring the natural beauty of Mill Brook. She regularly removes debris from its banks, and replaces invasive plants with native flora. In her role as Streamkeeper she has added regular monitoring and reporting on stream health. She understands that while her isolated efforts are important, care of Mill Brook requires a long-term commitment by Edison and Highland Park residents as well as municipal authorities.

Susan sees that inspiring a collective commitment to the health of Mill Brook is a crucial part of her role as Streamkeeper. Her goal is to encourage others to appreciate the Mill Brook as much as she does. She strongly believes that when residents learn about and visit the stream they will be motivated to care for it. In this sense she says she hopes her tenure as Mill Brook’s formal Streamkeeper will be short – and that her work will inspire someone else to become a steward and “Streamkeeper” of the stream.

Susan gave me examples of other stewardship she would like to see. For example, schools in the vicinity of the Mill Brook should encourage students to participate in restoring the waterway. And homeowners and business owners who live and work in proximity to the Mill Brook should treat the waterway as the living system it is, and give it room to serve as flood control and to allow for native riparian habitat (not lawns!) to become established. Susan believes that small steps like these will not only help ensure the environmental sustainability Mill Brook, but of all of our endangered watersheds.

Thank you, Susan!

Jimmy Rides Again!

Article and photos by Joe Mish

As elated as Lewis and Clark upon reaching the Colombia River, Jimmy and I proudly pose with our intrepid craft , “The Wild Turkey”, in the back of an old Ford Pickup

The eternal waters of the South Branch flow with memories and reflections, kept safe for those who have opened an account along its banks and written their story upon its waters.

I have a longstanding account, opened years ago, from which I make occasional withdrawals. The memories are recalled, polished with reflection and returned for safe keeping.

Hazy events, prompted by a scrap of paper that fell from one of my books, brought a canoe journey made decades before, into sharp focus. The lined, yellow paper, in my handwriting, was a record of time and places noted on a trip down the South Branch to the sea with my good friend Jim Serchio.

Jim worked across the hall from me in the pharmacology department at J&J. Intrigued by my stories of paddling solo to the mouth of the Raritan River; Jim recruited himself to join me on another run to the sea.

A hasty plan was hatched and a day chosen. We would launch from Main st in Clinton and paddle down to Keasbey. I would then walk to ‘Billy Vack’s Loop In’, an old iron workers bar located under the Parkway bridge, phone my brother-in-law, and get a ride in his pickup truck to my parent’s home, about three miles away.

The chosen canoe was my old canvas covered 1910 Old Town OTCA 16 named the “Wild Turkey”. Now stripped of canvas and covered with fiberglass, the hull was painted a flat, dead grass green and weighed in at about 85 pounds.

No cooler, just a couple of blue cushions and two guys in the canoe headed downstream. Jim was brilliant guy, studying biomedical engineering. I suppose it was his scientific inquisitiveness which finally prompted him, once we were underway, to ask, how long would the trip take. In my best carefully calculated estimation, I answered, “pretty much all day, we should be there before dark”.

As we passed under interstate 78, just after launching, I noted the time on my scrap of paper. Every time we passed a landmark, clock time was recorded.

Route 202 was reached at 9:23 am.

Looking over the sequence of shorthand notes, I now realize we had paddled under and over landmarks that are now gone or restored differently from their original form. Many of the metal bridges have been reconstructed over the years, their fieldstone supports now replicated by fieldstone veneer. I counted five bridges between Clinton and rt 31. The old dam we portaged below Dart’s mill is now essentially washed away. One bridge downstream of Neshanic station was not yet constructed. The scenery on the same trip today would be quite different.

Route 206 was reached at 1:09 pm

One entry made at 2:45 just before the second downstream pass under interstate 287 makes me smile; I wasn’t smiling then. I recorded the word ‘surgery’.

There was the wreckage of an old wooden bridge just before the last pass under I 287. It blocked our passage so we had to go up and over. As we set the heavy boat down on the rough planks, we did not see a huge spike that punctured the hull below the water line on the starboard side. The situation was looking grim as we were about to enter tide water on the last six hours of the trip. This meant navigating a running tide and staying clear of the main channel to avoid the large wakes churned up by tugboats and deep hulled pleasure craft.

Undaunted, we set the boat back in the water and began down river to see how bad the leak was. It was bad, real bad. How were we possibly going to finish. Pulling to shore, we looked around the debris, left by high tide, for a possible solution. Seeing a piece of yellow polypropylene rope, I had a flash of brilliance. As a kid I loved playing with fire, burning all sort of material including little plastic soldiers. The drops of melting plastic would quickly cool to form rock hard globs and even make a neat hissing sound as it dripped. On a hunch, I took the piece of rope, set it ablaze and dripped the plastic into the large hole in the hull. A perfect watertight fit and we were on our way.

At 4:30 we passed under rt 27, the low water encountered from 287 to Landing Lane Bridge road really slowed our progress. Now we had to deal with the wakes of large watercraft, which showed no mercy to two guys in a canoe. The resultant waves forced us to divert course, turn the bow into the wake and then re-correct to head downriver.

We passed the old drydock across from Crab Island at 6:15 and finally reached our destination under the New Jersey garden state parkway bridge, the former site of the Keasbey Outboard Motor Club, at 7:05pm.

While Jimmy entertained the bystanders, I headed up to Billy Vack’s to call my brother-in-law.

When I returned to the boat and Jimmy, someone asked where we put in. We were actually embarrassed to say, Clinton. We figured they wouldn’t believe us.

Our ride soon arrived and we could finally relax. We did it! Paddled from the NJ highlands to the Mouth of the Raritan river in about 12 hours in a 1910 Old Town canoe pressed into service for an epic journey to the sea.

Jimmy passed away a few years later from a medical procedure gone badly.

I still have the canoe and think fondly of the epic river journey shared with my good buddy Jim. The diary of times and places serves as a reference for memories and the ever changing river landscape.


Two of three pages from the ship’s diary, documents the journey of “The Wild Turkey” and its crew, serves to sharpen the memory of a dash to the sea by two friends in a turn of the century canoe.

Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.

Along the South Branch: Connected!

Article and photos by Joe Mish


Bear have no need to read signs, much less pronounce the names of obscure creeks, to figure out where they are going. They just put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads.

Two yearling bears curled up to sleep in a jumbled embrace, to form a single pile of pulsating fur, from which random legs protruded.

Upon waking, one bear walked downhill 500 paces to its right, the other 500 paces left, each bear seeking to satisfy its thirst in the nearby streams.

Rested and full of adventure, thirst satisfied, both bears began to follow their respective stream in the direction the water flowed.

One bear followed Plum Brook to Wickecheoke Creek and ended up on the Delaware River, while its sibling rambled along the Second Neshanic River, to the First Neshanic River, to the Neshanic River, to the South Branch of the Raritan River, to the Raritan River

The two streams, arising from springs, on each side of a common ridge, a mere half mile apart, lead to the state’s opposite coasts. Together the streams form a direct pathway from coast to coast.

We live in a provincial world defined by geopolitical borders, reinforced by the scale of our self-imposed home range. When we travel US route 1 in New Brunswick, we never consider that if we go straight, instead of turning into Chipotle, we end up in Caribou, Maine or the Florida Keys. Same situation as the two bears.

Whether tracing the tracks of a rambling bear down a watery trail to the coast, or a paved highway to opposite ends of the continent, we begin to see a connectivity to distant places.  Artificial borders fall away and perspective comes into focus. Taken to the highest resolution, we see that celestial events in the cosmos dictate the requirements and conditions for life on earth.

Adjust the resolution and closer to home we see the Atlantic flyway, a major bird migration route from the arctic to Mexico. Events at either end of the spectrum and along the flyway, can have a dramatic impact on population dynamics of many species.

Preserved lands like the Rachael Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Maine and the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey are just two of many areas critical to migrating, nesting and overwintering avian activity. Private lands cannot be overlooked and must be appreciated for their valuable contribution outside established state and federal refuges and wildlife management areas.

On a smaller scale, though still expansive, is the critical need for linear greenways in an area broken into isolated segments of habitat.

Many reptiles, amphibians and furbearers are impacted. Isolated populations require a critical amount of genetic variation to remain viable into the future.

Slow moving turtles such as the bog and eastern box turtle are especially threatened. They are now exposed to predators and cars on their journey to lay eggs or migration forced by habitat loss. To celebrate the establishment of isolated patches of open space is misplaced, if a pathway is not considered.

Concerned with isolated habitat and lack of greenways connecting them, the State of NJ, Dept of Environmental Protection, Natural and Historic Resources, Div of Fish and Wildlife, has established a program to examine the impact of isolated habitat and genetic variation. Their program is CHANJ- Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey.

“The goal of this project is to collect DNA samples from a variety of native, terrestrial mammal species across NJ that represents the spectrum of movement capabilities. The genetics analysis will help us understand the impact of landscape fragmentation and road barriers on wildlife mobility.”

I have volunteered to participate and collect tissue samples from roadkill or harvested animals. Please contact me if you spot a fresh roadkill other than deer; jjmish57@msn.com

Far away places exist only in our limited imagination, programmed with a distorted sense of scale. Put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads.

Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.