Please join us Friday November 3 for a tour of recent stormwater basin retrofits in the Lower Raritan portion of Franklin Township. Our tour guide will be Kathy Hale with the New Jersey Water Supply Authority (NJWSA) who will speak to the role of stormwater basins in reducing sediment loading in our waterways, and provide a soup-to-nuts overview of project implementation at five (5) basins.

Please plan to meet 9:30am at Stagehouse Tavern (1719 Amwell Rd, Somerset, NJ 08873). We will carpool to the sites from there, returning by noon. We welcome you to join us to continue the conversation about all things stormwater over lunch at Stagehouse Tavern after the tour. Please wear clothing and footwear appropriate for the weather and for walking in areas of pooling water! Bring your own water bottle, snacks if you need them.

We will visit five stormwater basins at the following locations:

• Franklin Township Municipal Building
• Gauguin Way (visit via Middlebush Park)
• Renoir Way
• Dellwood Lane
• Laird Terrace

About our tour guide: Kathy Hale is Principal Watershed Protection Specialist for NJWSA. Kathy has a B.A. from Bucknell University and an M.S. in Environmental Science from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. At the New Jersey Water Supply Authority, Kathy is responsible for managing watershed protection and restoration projects, including in-stream and riparian buffer restoration projects, stormwater management projects and River-Friendly programs. Kathy is also president of the NJ Section of the American Water Resources Association and co-chair of the 2010 AWRA National Conference. She has fifteen years of experience in watershed management in New Jersey, including work in the private and public sectors.

About the stormwater basin retrofits: NJSWA Staff worked with Franklin Township to identify stormwater basin retrofit projects and received additional watershed restoration funding from NJDEP. Four projects were completed in 2020 with the NJDEP funding. A fifth project was completed in 2021 with stormwater mitigation funding from the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission. The five basins primarily receive residential runoff and contained concrete low flow channels and turf grass bottoms. The retrofit options for the basins focused on lengthening the flowpath and increasing the overall detention time for runoff. Franklin Township is responsible for maintenance at the basins.

These retrofits are part of NJWSA’s D&R Canal Tributary Assessment and Nonpoint Source Management Plan, which was approved by NJDEP as a watershed restoration plan in 2006. As part of the project, NJWSA identified 72 stormwater inputs to the Canal and identified priority areas for implementation. Initial implementation efforts focused on drainage areas that link directly to the Canal and then expanded to the entirety of Franklin Township to support implementation of the Raritan Basin total nutrient TMDL and additional watershed plans.

About the New Jersey Water Supply Authority (NJWSA):

The New Jersey Water Supply Authority (NJWSA) manages the Delaware & Raritan Canal as a 65-mile water supply facility that transfers water from the Delaware Basin to the Raritan Basin. Data and field observations demonstrate that turbidity (sediment) does not decrease in the last 11 miles of the Canal, indicating that settling solids are replaced by turbidity from influent streams and discharges.

Additional projects that were completed with 2006-2007 Section 319(h) funding from NJDEP include:

• Installation of a USGS monitoring station at Landing Lane,
• Retrofit of a dry detention basin to a wet detention basin in the infall 38 drainage area
• Installation of a nutrient separating baffle box and five Filterra vegetated inlets in the infall 21 drainage area
• Rain barrel workshops in Franklin Township and South Bound Brook Borough,
• Conceptual project memos for additional projects.