The Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership and Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Middlesex County run a volunteer pathogens monitoring program from May to September every Summer. On Thursdays we collect water quality samples at 6 non-bathing public access beaches along the Raritan River, and report out the results on Friday afternoons. Our results for 8.12.2021 are a mixed bag. Numbers for the upstream sites (Riverside Park, Rutgers Boathouse, and Edison Boathouse) are high, whereas downstream toward the Raritan Bay the numbers improve (Ken Buchanan Waterfront Park, South Amboy Waterfront Park, Perth Amboy’s 2nd Street Park). As always, if you choose to recreate on the water this weekend, stay safe, and be sure to wash your hands! See here for more information on our pathogens monitoring program.
A few additional things to share:
#1 Holy smokes was it a hot day for monitoring yesterday! If you are out in this crazy heat, stay hydrated!
#2: LRWP volunteers and friends are AMAZING!!
Gratitude to: Dorina Cardinale, Janet Sacklow, Jason Acevedo, Andrew Gehman and Maya Fenyk for sampling yesterday. And special thanks to Jesse Stratowski with Rutgers Recreation for opening things up at the boathouse for us!
Thanks also to LRWP Water Quality Outreach Project Coordinator Jocelyn Palomino and Rutgers Environmental Stewards Program Steward Julisa Collado (and her father Jose) for coordinating a fun youth outreach event at our last stop in Perth Amboy.
We enjoyed catching up with friends who joined us for outreach: a pair of white swans, Elizabeth Pyshnik with Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program, Renee Skelton with Perth Amboy SWIM, Raritan Riverkeepers Bill Schultz & Lorraine McCartney, and Michael DuFour with Sky Horse Tech LLC who brought the very cool “water drone” prototype, designed for in-channel sampling (see photos).
From its headwaters in the Devil’s Brook Swamp at Monmouth Junction, to its outlet on the Raritan, Lawrence Brook once powered six mills from Deans to New Brunswick. Over the next few months local historian Richard Walling will share his research (including photos and maps) into the history of the Lawrence Brook Mills sites and their relationship to our Raritan River and Lower Raritan Watershed.
Richard is pictured here at the Farrington Lake step-dam, the site of a mill dating to the 1750s. He writes: “By the way, if the Brits had continued their 1778 withdrawal from Philly towards New Brunswick, what developed as the Battle of Monmouth could have taken place along the Lawrence Brook.“
This is the first in a series about mill sites along the Lawrence Brook.
Let us begin at the beginning: Geologically speaking, the Lawrence Brook generally separates two types of land forms in central NJ: the Piedmont & the Inner Coastal Plain. Brunswick shale is to the north of it, and loam to the south of it. The famed Middlesex County clay district extends westerly along the southern bank of the stream, at least as far west as Farrington Lake. Many of us remember digging gray clay from the shoreline near the broken dam in present-day Bicentennial Park (East Brunswick).
The Lenape called the stream, piskëpekw [-w is a whispered voiceless w], meaning “dark water”. Whether this alluded to the water’s color, to the shadowed waterway caused by steep banks, or even possibly from it’s headwaters at Devil’s Brook Swamp (did the Lenape call Devil’s Brook by the same connotation in their own language?). The land form of a neck, where Rutgers Village is located, was called ramawùnk (Ramawon in English), meaning “under the hill” or “under the bank”. Translations are provided by Lenape linguist, Ray Whritenour.
Native American artifacts are found all along the stream’s course and a path still runs along its eastern portion in the vicinity of Rte. 18 near the NJ Turnpike (Westons Mills). When a parking lot was being constructed on the Cook College campus, a cache of projectile points was found. The high ground at places like von Thun’s farm in South Brunswick, and Rutgers Gardens in New Brunswick once hosted villages. I know many folks who picked up artifacts in East Brunswick along Farrington Lake.
The earliest land transfer was from Native leaders to Thomas Lawrence, The Baker, a NY city merchant. As you can see from the circa 1685 map of the area, his holdings were affirmed by the East Jersey Board of Proprietors.
Map from 1685 showing the Lawrence Brook in relation to the Rariton (sic) River, South River, and land holdings of the time, source: https://www.loc.gov/item/97683564/
CONVEYANCE. Land called Ramawon on the south side of the Raritan River. [East Jersey].
Tract of land called Ramawon bounded by the Raritan and Pisscopeck Rivers.May 1, 1678
TO: Thomas Lawrence (Baker) (of New York; [Lawrence the Baker])
FROM: George Carteret (Sir) (Lord Proprietor); Philip Carteret (Esquire) (Governor of the Province)
PATENT. 1300 acres. South side Raritan River; a creek called PiscopeckIn 1693, the creek, now called Lawrence Creek (Brook), was granted to Peter Sonman, running from near Rocky Hill, all the way to Thomas Lawrence’s grant along the Raritan.
Oct. 20, 1693 TO: Peter Sonmans (Merchant) (of London; Proprietor; Son of Arent Sonmans, deceased, and Frances Sonmans; Brother of Johana Sonmans and Rachell Sonmans)
FROM: Proprietors of the Province of East New Jersey
CONVEYANCE. 38600 acres. Between Milston and Raritan Rivers; beginning at the Partition Line between East and West Jersey; opposite the foot of Rockie Hill; on both sides of Lawrence Creek; to the South River; Middlesex County.
June 7, 1677 Conveyance Record. NOTE: Isarick may have been the father of Wequeheela, who resided in present-day Spotswood.
The 1781 map below, drawn by a British Army cartographer, is a general depiction of the stream, and of George’s Road (present-day Rte. 130 in part), George’s Road led from George Rescarrick’s Tavern (circa 1686) in Cranbury to New Brunswick. Below Cranbury, it led to Hightstown, Allentown, Crosswicks and points south. Longfield’s Mill is where Rte. 18 crosses the stream, a stretch known as Westons Mill.
Rich’s next installment will be on the Headwaters of the Lawrence Brook.
Please join us Saturday, August 14th for a three hour tour of the Headgates, Robert Street and Nevius Street dams. This tour will be led by the very wonderful and informative hydrogeologist John Jengo, PG, LRSP. The tour will include discussion of past and future dam removals, and will be a chance to see the scale of the dams so that downstream removals can be understood in context.
We will kick things off promptly at 8:30 am at Headgates Dam, followed by the Robert Street and Nevius Street dams. We estimate the trip will be approximately 3 hours. We will be walking along the river banks to see these sites, so plan on wearing appropriate footwear. For those interested, we can also visit the Weston Mill Dam site at the end of the day, which can be viewed from the Weston Causeway Bridge.
The LRWP is grateful to John Jengo for offering this opportunity. Registration is limited to 18 people. Directions and parking information will be sent to registrants in advance of the event.
ABOUT JOHN W. JENGO, PG, LSRP: John is a licensed Professional Geologist in several Northeastern and Southeastern states and a Licensed Site Remediation Professional in New Jersey. John works as a Principal Hydrogeologist in an environmental consulting firm in southeastern Pennsylvania. He has degrees in geology from Rutgers University (1980) and the University of Delaware (1982). Over the last 30 years, he has conducted the characterization and remediation of large, complex contaminated industrial sites throughout New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. He played a key role in Natural Resource Damage (NRD) assessments that led to groundbreaking legal settlements to remove numerous low head dams on the Raritan and Millstone Rivers to restore historically significant migratory fish spawning runs. As technical project manager, he planned, permitted, and successfully managed the removal of the Calco Dam, the Robert Street Dam, and the Nevius Street Dam between 2008-2013, and the removal of the Weston Mill Dam on the Millstone River in 2017, along with leading the archaeological investigation of the former Weston Mill in the Borough of Manville and Franklin Township.
The Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership and Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Middlesex County run a volunteer pathogens monitoring program from May to September every Summer. On Thursdays we collect water quality samples at 6 non-bathing public access beaches along the Raritan River, and report out the results on Friday afternoons. Our results for 7.15.2021 look pretty good! See here for more information on our pathogens monitoring program.
Happy Weekend!
We had a great team out for pathogens monitoring, and put all hands to work catching samples, documenting habitat, and recording data. THANK YOU VOLUNTEERS!!
In this online “Option Green” presentation, sponsored by the East Brunswick Public Library, LRWP Board President Heather Fenyk will discuss the history of the Lower Raritan Watershed from indigenous to colonial and industrial development to its current status, provide a snapshot overview of the health of the streams and tributaries that feed into the Raritan River, the history of the pollutants in the river and how cleanup has evolved. She will also provide information on how citizens can help restore our waterways through environmental stewardship and citizen science.
By LRWP #lookfortheriver Outreach Coordinator Anjali Madgula
Timescales
When we talk about human caused climate change, often we are talking about time. How much time does it take for a global ecosystem to undergo significant change? How much time does it take for pollution to affect a local community, a whole country, and then a global ecosystem? How much time do our plastics spend in our hands, in a landfill, in an ocean, in the stomach of a sea creature, and as a toxic substance spreading into our communities and bodies? And how much time do we have, to implement change and achieve just and sustainable living conditions for all?
Often, climate issues have to be approached in unique and creative ways because of their slow moving yet massive impacts. In his book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon outlines the concept of slow violence, which he defines as the “delayed destruction” that is character of climate disasters that span over decades and centuries, occurring through everyday toxic buildup and greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike violence that is immediate, visible, and sudden, the slow violence of environmental degradation is much more difficult to draw attention to in everyday media, despite being seriously capable of damage. Nixon writes, “How can we turn the long emergencies of slow violence into stories dramatic enough to rouse public sentiment and warrant political intervention, these emergencies whose repercussions have given rise to some of the most critical challenges of our time?” (Slow Violence, 3).
Earth Overshoot Day
People across disciplines are using narratives, statistics, and actions to make visible the long term scale of the climate crisis alongside the need for carbon heavy countries to decarbonize and transform their infrastructure in the immediate present. In 2006, an organization called Global Footprint Network created the concept of Earth Overshoot Day. Earth Overshoot annually calculates the calendar date for when the amount of our resource consumption for that year exceeds the amount of the Earth’s biocapacity (the amount of resources generated by Earth that year). The GFN’s work showcases the climate story across the human and nonhuman in the unique frame of just one year’s biocapacity and consumption.
In the past few decades, Earth Overshoot Day has moved steadily from the middle of October closer to the end of July, meaning not only that we are consistently consuming way more than the Earth generates per year but also that we are consuming more every year. Only in 2020, did Earth Overshoot Day get pushed to August 22nd due to a decrease in our annual ecological footprint from the first half of the COVID pandemic. However, in 2021, the calculations remain on par with the previous trend: Earth Overshoot Day will be on July 29, 2021.
The GFN also calculates an individual country’s Overshoot Day, which tells us when Earth Overshoot Day would fall if the whole world consumed like that country does. If everyone consumed in the manner that the United States of America does, Earth Overshoot Day would have been on March 14, 2021, just barely three months into the year.
In examining these statistics, it is important to reflect on where the onus for climate action lies and how carbon heavy countries harm countries with lower consumption rates on multiple levels, through overburdening the global climate but also by establishing industries and toxic activities in marginalized communities across the world.
Reflection through Local Restoration
Reflecting on the implications of Earth Overshoot Day during this extremely hot summer, invites me to ground myself in the work and movement building of our local communities in New Jersey and the Lower Raritan Watershed. While a global framing is essential, we can document changes in our own ecosystems and build community around stewardship and advocacy to make restoration and resilience possible. We can engage in discussions about resources, energy, and carbon emissions, by drawing attention to the specific issues and experiences of our community here. In order to have the greatest impact, it is important to have as many community members involved!
During the month of July which is marked by the 2021 Earth Overshoot Day on July 29, we can get involved with the new and continued programming of our watershed. The LRWP’s #lookfortheriver campaign has a new instagram page (@lookfortheriver) where you can be up to date with the citizen science work of the FRAMES sculpture in Boyd Park and other #lookfortheriver activities. The LRWP is also launching a stormwater management assistance program to help townships meet their federally mandated stormwater management education requirements.
These programs, amongst others, create spaces for us to navigate the global ecological crisis by protecting the ecosystems we have made a home within.
Citations
Nixon, Rob. Slow VIolence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 2013. “Earth Overshoot Day” , overshootday.org, July 2021.
Another pretty good week of results from our pathogen monitoring. While our downstream sites are within limits, the Piscataway site continues to give us trouble with very high enterococcus and fecal coliform TNTC or “Too Numerous To Count.” Yikes! We received .7 inch of precipitation since sampling, which likely means the pathogens count will be higher at all sites.
Many thanks to our Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Middlesex County, and Interstate Environmental Commission partners, and special thanks to our wonderful volunteers!! See here for more information on our pathogens monitoring program. Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend Everyone!
Civic science monitoring volunteer Frank Dahl at our Sayreville site – thank you, Frank!
Please join us Sunday October 3, 2-4 pm for our second “walk in the watershed” in South Bound Brook/Bound Brook with LRWP Board Member and Rutgers Professor David Tulloch! We also expect Green Brook Flood Control Commission Chair Raymond Murray to join us for part of our tour.
Plan to meet at D&R Canal Lock 11 in South Bound Brook. There is limited parking in this lot, however there is plenty of street parking.
We will start our conversation at D&R Canal Lock 11, explore a bit of the canal and talk about its function and its relationship with the health of the river. From there we will walk over to Bound Brook to see the flood control gates by the traffic circle and the levees at Billian Legion Park. We will continue our walk up the Lincoln Ave Bridge to take in views of the Raritan.
For Summer 2021 the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership and our Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Middlesex County partners are building up our pathogens monitoring program in several new ways.
With grant support from The Watershed Institute we have engaged Jocelyn Palomino as a Project Coordinator to lead sampling and conduct outreach focused on engagement with the Spanish-speaking community. This will involve sampling demonstrations at our Perth Amboy 2nd Street Park site, boat trips, and more.
Earlier this Spring we started meeting with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding improving our understanding of pathogens flows into the Raritan. In addition to our six (6) non-bathing public access beach monitoring sites, for Summer 2021 the EPA will monitor an additional 22 in-channel sites for fecal/enterococcus going all the way up to Bound Brook and including the D&R Canal;
With support from the EPA, we will continue genetic source studies at our 6 sites AS WELL AS at the EPA’s 22 new sites to determine whether the fecal is human/bird/dog/horse etc.;
We are working with Interstate Environmental Commission to compare IDEXX vs. membrane filtration technology. This means that each of our samples will be analyzed by BOTH methods during this monitoring season. It will be an interesting comparison to run these numbers for the whole summer. NJDEP ONLY accepts the more stringent IDEXX method.
We are working with Rutgers Office of Analytics to develop a predictive model based on our data. That is, our goal with the model is to input precipitation, rainfall, tidal influence, etc. for those dates that we cannot go out sampling, and still get a good sense for what the likelihood of fecal/entero levels.
We are planning more water-based reconnaissance for outfalls and compromised sewage infrastructure at our sites, particularly the Piscataway site.
We are working with Brenda Allen, a doctoral candidate with the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, to help us understand possible land use impacts on our numbers, and help us prioritize where we start our on-the-ground sleuthing;
We are working with a start-up technology company to deploy a water-based drone that can travel the Raritan catching samples as-needed. They will deploy the drone within the next few weeks.
We continue to build a research program to better understand risks, and in this regard we are working to get Middlesex County Health involved. With EPA now very invested, we hope that with the IDEXX vs. membrane filtration comparison study we’ll be able to convince NJDEP to work with us (and our data) as well.
For those of you making plans to be on the Raritan, see below for pathogens sampling results for six non-bathing public access beach sites for yesterday, May 27/2021. (See here for more on our pathogens monitoring program).
Enterococci results are reported in Colony Forming Units or CFUs. Suitable levels for primary contact should not exceed 104 cfu/100mL. Please note that while the numbers look good for our Edison, Sayreville, South Amboy and Perth Amboy sites, we have received significant rainfall since sampling, which typically increases bacteria loading into our waters. Pathogens/Enterococci levels are used as indicators of the possible presence of disease-causing bacteria in recreational waters. Such pathogens may pose health risks to people fishing and swimming in a water body. Sources of bacteria include Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), improperly functioning wastewater treatment plants, stormwater runoff, leaking septic systems, animal carcasses, and runoff from manure storage areas.
Huge thanks to our partners: Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Middlesex County and the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission.
Field Notes:
What a beautiful day to kick off monitoring for 2021! We were joined in the field by our new Project Coordinator Jocelyn Palomino, project interns Jason Acevedo and Julisa Collado, Jessica Bonamusa from the Interstate Environmental Commission, and Stan Stephenson with the Environmental Protection Agency.
What a beautiful day to kick off monitoring for 2021! We were joined in the field by our new Project Coordinator Jocelyn Palomino, project interns Jason Acevedo and Julisa Collado, Jessica Bonamusa from the Interstate Environmental Commission, and Stan Stephenson with the Environmental Protection Agency. Pictured here from left to right are Jason, Stan and Jocelyn.
The Edison, Sayreville and South Amboy sites were busy with boating activity. Almost two dozen boat trailers were parked at the Ken Buchanan Boat Ramp in Sayreville, and we waved to folks on jet skis in the water there.
Please enjoy the Raritan safely! Be sure to wash thoroughly with soap and hot water after any contact with our waters.
Ken Buchanan Boat Ramp in Sayreville, with a view of the former JCP&L Power Plant.
