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.
Monitoring results for yesterday 8.26.2021 show that our upstream sites (Piscatway, New Brunswick, Edison) are the ones with problems.
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 8.19.2021 are just about the worst we’ve seen this year. According to our lab, the wonderful Interstate Environmental Commission, for several of our sites the enterococcus and fecal bacterial levels were “TNTC” or “Too Numerous To Count.” The South Amboy Waterfront Park site is the only “winner” for the week. It is relatively clean, likely due to tidal flushing.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) yesterday announced the designation of a new Marine Highway Project in the Lower Raritan as part of the America’s Marine Highway Program (AMHP), the Port Raritan Terminal Facility.
The “Marine Highway Project” designation will support service from the Raritan Port located in the Lower Raritan Watershed to various locations in New York City, accommodating Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro) barges carrying wheeled containers, ferries capable of carrying trucks, Lift-on/Lift-off (Lo-Lo) barges that can be used to support offshore wind-energy turbines, and other services.
According to the press release, project goals include:
create and sustain jobs in U.S. vessels, ports and shipyards
relieve landside congestion
reduce maintenance costs and improve the U.S. transportation system’s overall state-of-repair (wear and tear on roads and bridges)
drive the mandatory use of emerging engine technologies
improve U.S. economic competitiveness by adding new cost-effective freight and passenger transportation capacities
improve environmental sustainability of the U.S. transportation system by using less energy and reducing air emissions (such as greenhouse gases) per passenger or ton-mile of freight moved
improve public safety and security by providing alternatives for the movement of hazardous materials outside heavily populated areas
improve transportation system resiliency and redundancy by providing transportation alternatives during times of disaster or national emergency
improve national security by adding to the nation’s strategic sealift resources.
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).
We know that waters throughout the Raritan Basin contain unsafe levels of nutrients, fecal coliform and other pollutants – much of this type of polluting is directly related to “non-point source” pollution, most often stormwater runoff, which can be linked to land development and an excess of hard or “impervious” surfaces like roadways, asphalt parking lots, and buildings. Portions of our Lower Raritan Watershed also fail to meet federal Clean Water Act standards for phosphorous, pH, arsenic, chromium, mercury, copper, lead, temperature, dissolved oxygen, total dissolved solids and other pollutants. Some of this is due to historic “point source” dumping and legacy contaminants, and some of this is due to ongoing permitted point source polluting.
What is Permitted Point Source Polluting and who are New Jersey’s Permitted Polluters?
The New Jersey Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NJPDES) Program is designed to protect New Jersey’s ground and surface water quality by regulating treatment and discharge of polluted wastewater and stormwater from various types of facilities and activities. To accomplish this, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) issues permits to polluting facilities limiting the mass and/or concentration of pollutants which may be discharged into ground water, streams, rivers, and the ocean. The types of regulated facilities can range from small users to large industrial and municipal wastewater dischargers. A complete list of the NJPDES permitted polluters for 2020 can be found here:
How can we protect our waterways from point source pollution?
The NJDEP is required by the Clean Water Act to create and implement a plan to remove pollution from impaired water bodies. They do this by preparing a TMDL, or Total Maximum Daily Load determination for a water body. A TMDL is a scientific determination of the maximum amount of a given pollutant that a surface water body can absorb and still protect human health and aquatic life.
Unfortunately for the Lower Raritan, we do not have a TMDL. A TMDL to address pollution in the Raritan Basin was begun in 2016, but for our area – the Lower Raritan Watershed – it is incomplete. The white area in the map below shows swaths of land, and the NJPDES Facilities (permitted polluters) on that land that are not covered by a TMDL. Now this does not mean that polluters can pollute at will, but what it does mean is that we have less of a real sense for what pollutants are in our waters, or for what harm the mix of pollutants might cause.
