Fifty-four towns in the Raritan River basin will benefit from a $1.17 million federal grant that will fund flood mitigation and green infrastructure projects in each municipality.
The grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) was awarded to Rutgers University through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to develop projects for local municipalities, including East Brunswick, Old Bridge, Monroe, Sayreville, Helmetta, Jamesburg, Milltown, North Brunswick, South Amboy, South River and Spotswood.
“This project is working on such a large scale that it should make a real difference for New Jersey,” said Mandy Chesnutt, senior manager of conservation projects at NFWF.
The total $102.7 million from the Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grant Program was divided among nationwide projects chosen by NFWF last week, according to Chesnutt. New Jersey projects received $25.3 million.
“[Rutgers University] is going … to do assessments on how they can remove impervious surfaces and create green infrastructure in these communities,” she said.
A main criterion in determining if a project qualifies for funding is whether it addresses at-risk communities, Chesnutt said. “They are areas that are experiencing flooding on an ongoing basis, and they are where people live and where infrastructure is being damaged,” Chesnutt said. “It kind of hits on all [the criteria].”
Christopher Obropta, extension specialist in water resources with Rutgers Cooperative Extension, said the project encompasses more than half of the towns connected to the basin and its waterways.
“The whole concept about this project is really to focus on helping towns identify where there might be opportunities to reduce the impact of impervious coverage,” he said.
Obropta, who is also an associate professor in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers, said one acre of pavement results in 27,000 gallons of runoff per inch of rainwater, which ultimately ends up in nearby streams where it can contribute to flooding and an overall reduction in water quality.
“If an inch of rain lands on your driveway, an inch of rain runs off,” he said. “It doesn’t get infiltrated; it goes right into the street, right into the catch basin, and right into the stream.”
By comparison, Obropta said one acre of grass in place of the pavement would completely eliminate the runoff entering the waterways. Instead, he said, water would be naturally filtered and become groundwater.
Leveraging natural processes is the aim of the entire project, according to Obropta. By doing so, costs remain low and myriad benefits can be produced by one project.
He said rain gardens planted in 3- to 6- inch depressions placed near a runoff source are helpful in diverting and infiltrating rainwater.
According to Obropta, rain gardens planted with flowers also clean the air and facilitate the pollination process.
“Every plant that we put in the ground suppresses carbon, so we’re helping with climate change … and it helps to purify the air,” he said. “It’s a bigger picture than just thinking about flooding.
“We’re using green infrastructure to reduce the impact of impervious coverage — not just on flooding, but on the environment in general.”
According to Obropta, holistic solutions, such as capturing storm water runoff from solar panels and channeling it for use in nearby buildings, are easy and cheap to implement.
He said benefits far outweigh the costs, unlike the construction of a water treatment facility, which serves only one purpose and is expensive to construct.
“Yeah, we can build big concrete tanks, and we can build big filters that capture the water,” he said. “But, it’s going to be wildly expensive, and you don’t take advantage of the natural processes that occur … that do the same thing at a much more reasonable cost and get all these other ancillary benefits.
“Nature has known how to manage storm water for a long time, but we as a population, as a society, have stopped that because we’ve paved over the landscape,” Obropta said. “We stop the natural process of infiltration, and we create more storm water runoff.”
According to Obropta, projects that take advantage of nature’s mechanisms are simply more efficient.
“Using these natural systems, these green infrastructure systems, tends to be much more cost-effective,” he said. “These are low-cost solutions that work.”