By Jim Waltman
Fifty years ago, many of America’s rivers were open sewers for human and industrial waste. The nation was horrified in 1969 when the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire. The sight and stench of our waterways created a public outcry that prompted Congress to pass the Clean Water Act in 1972. That law and subsequent amendments ended most direct discharges of untreated sewage and industrial pollution into our water bodies, which led to a dramatic improvement in water quality.
But unfortunately, this action has not come close to solving all of our water pollution problems. In fact, more than 80 percent of New Jersey’s streams still fail to meet all of the state’s water quality standards. What’s responsible for most water pollution now? We all are! The sources of pollution are many: pesticides and fertilizers we spread on our lawns, petroleum and antifreeze that spill from our cars, leaks from failing septic systems and broken sewer pipes, waste from our pets, soap from washing our cars, road salt we spread on our driveways and sidewalks, to name just a few.
When it rains, this witches brew of pollutants wash over our lawns, driveways, parking lots and streets as “polluted stormwater runoff.” In most cases, the polluted runoff flows into storm drains, then through a series of subterranean pipes that carry the runoff directly to local streams. For most of us, these polluted streams are a source of our drinking water.
The problem is being exacerbated by the steady march of black top, concrete, roof tops and other hard surfaces that are impervious to water. With fewer unpaved areas to filter the polluted runoff and allow it to percolate down into the ground, there is more polluted runoff rushing into our streams and, consequently, more flooding. These “impervious surfaces” also rob our groundwater; because less water is sinking into the ground, our ground water supplies are not replenished as much as they once were.
With funding support from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the Watershed is working in 16 central New Jersey towns to address this triple threat of water pollution, flooding, and reduced groundwater recharge. We’re collaborating with Rutgers University, which is working in other towns in the state under a similar grant.
The idea is to identify areas with large expanses of asphalt or concrete that can be reduced and/or retrofitted with strategies to capture polluted runoff, filter it with vegetation or other means, and allow it to infiltrate into the ground. Supplementing our towns’ existing infrastructure with a new kind of “green infrastructure” can help reduce pollution and flooding and improve the condition of our groundwater aquifers.
We’ve deployed a number of these strategies at our new Watershed Center for Environmental Advocacy, Science and Education in Hopewell Township. First, we removed several large sections of asphalt driveway that were not necessary and restored healthy soil and meadow grasses. Some areas of lawn were reinforced with a recycled plastic honeycomb product that is strong enough for trucks to drive on but which allows rain and snowmelt to percolate through.
Runoff from portions of the Watershed Center’s roof is directed to rain gardens that capture and filter the water and allow it to percolate into the ground. A green roof, on another section of roof slows down and removed water through evaporation and transpiration of plants. We capture runoff from yet another portion of roof into a large cistern and use it to flush toilets in the building.
We are eager to work with municipal governments, businesses, schools, civic centers and others to help replicate what we’ve done in other locations around our region.New Jersey’s environmental regulations are among the strongest in the country. When they are fully enforced (unfortunately, they frequently are not), they can slow down the rate at which new developments make our water pollution and flooding problems worse. But to really address our water problems, we need to not only improve our regulation of new developments, we also need to address the development that occurred before our environmental regulations were enacted.
Redevelopment projects offer a great opportunity to deploy green infrastructure. Every time a building is razed to make way for a new development or a parking lot is reconfigured, there’s an opportunity to heal our degraded waters by implementing measures to address polluted stormwater runoff. Municipalities should seize these opportunities when reviewing redevelopment proposals or creating redevelopment plans and residents who are concerned about their water should demand that they do so.
Jim Waltman is the executive director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association. The Watershed is a member-supported non-profit organization that works to keep water clean, safe and healthy in central New Jersey. For more information about the Watershed, visit www.thewatershed.org or call (609) 737-3735.
