1st Raritan River Symposium, 2009

Speakers

JIM FLORIO

49th Gov of NJ 1990-94

RUTGERS

Administrators & Faculty

BOB SPIEGEL

Edison Wetlands Association

JOHN MCCORMICK

Mayor of Keasby NJ

KENNETH H KLIPSTEIN

NJ Dept of Environmental Protection [DEP]

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER

from NJ DEP

JUNE CHOI

Mayor of Edison NJ

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKERS

on panel and in audience

Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ: May 15 2009

Introductory Note

This “1st Annual Sustainable Raritan River Symposium” consisted of wide-ranging and exciting discussions on improving water quality and usage. Conditions were cited, solutions were introduced, and priorities were openly debated.

This “NWNL SPLASH” captures the day’s wide range of issues needing continuing collaboration to ensure a healthy Raritan River Basin. NWNL applauds the goal to set agendas for future Sustainable Raritan River Initiative summits, to be hosted again by Rutgers University’s Edward J Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

Conversations were free ranging, thus many comments taped by NWNL sadly lack attribution.

PS: NWNL was honored at this symposium to receive the Eagle Award from Dean Judith Shaw for its ongoing documentation of the Raritan River. Our coverage of threats and efforts to restore the Raritan Basin continued through 2019. Within those years, NWNL attended all but one of SRRI conferences.

Outline

OPENING REMARKS
RARITAN RIVER CONCERNS
EDISON WETLANDS ASSOCIATION
STEWARDSHIP DIFFERENCES
RESTORING ECOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS
OPEN SPACE PRESERVATION
CURRENT STATUS / POTENTIAL CHANGE
A REGIONAL SUCCESS STORY

Key Quotes Crooked streams are a menace to life and crops in the area bordering our banks. The twists and turns of the channel retard the flow and reduce the capacity of the stream to handle large volumes of water. Floods result; crops are ruined; lives are lost; banks are undermined, causing cave-ins. — “How Dynamite Streamlines Streams” Dupont ad, “American Forest” (Aug. 1935)

This Summit is the start of a great movement. Ladies and gentlemen, the wind is with us. The tide is now high. The eagle circles above, watching and waiting. Let’s go forward. — James Florio, former Governor of New Jersey

The Raritan is a river in recovery; but it’s also a river under attack. – Bob Spiegel, Edison Wetlands Assoc.

OPENING REMARKS to the 1st Sustainable Raritan River Initiative

RUTGERS SPEAKER-1 We must appreciate the Raritan River Basin as place we can enjoy, as a place to appreciate nature. We want to encourage people to get out on the river and to see that it is a source of clean water all the way into the bay. This means making sure we have the data to show that it is safe; protections to ensure its integrity; the infrastructure to protect it from nonpoint sources of pollution as well as storm water. The University sees this resource [the Raritan River Basin] as central to its mission and its campus that has over 30,000 students on it. In cooperation with environmental groups and local governments, the state government, we want to involve students in long time stewardship and data gathering.

RUTGERS SPEAKER-2 We have a lot of data gaps right now as to the quality of the water and the sources of contributions to its impairments. We need to promote and to educate our communities on the values and benefits of a restored river.

NJ GOVERNOR JIM FLORIO I am troubled by the perspectives and observations I’ve made over environment policy in general and water resource policy in particular over the last 40 years. In northern New Jersey, where we get most of our water from surface water supplies, development is occurring in those areas that will pollute our drinking water systems there. The Highlands Initiative was largely based upon concerns about the adequacy of our water supplies. So we all have a responsibility to go out and lift the level of awareness.

Years ago, I came to Rutgers as a kid from Brooklyn, NY, where anything west of the Hudson River is the Midwest. All the people who came from Brooklyn went to Los Angeles with the Dodgers. But coming to Rutgers as a 16-year-old freshman was impressive to me, when I saw a Rutgers crew team rowing on the Raritan and heard the Rutgers Glee Club singing about “The Banks of the Old Raritan.”

What has happened to that river that we pass by and barely notice? This river carried the British troops looking for George Washington, as the rising sun was at their backs and the current carried them. Our nation then was in peril. Washington had been defeated in New York and was retreating and the Continental Congress was in disarray.

The Indians thought the spirit of the river protected them…. And that spirit lives in this room… This river cannot die because it’s part of us. It is life. It is nature. We have a sacred trust. We are entrusted with the protection of our natural resources. When man does not protect nature and is not in harmony with nature, serious and traumatic consequences occur.

The river is the “canary” taken by Welsh miners down into the shaft to signal if the oxygen is running out. If the canary dies, they have precious little time to survive. The Raritan is our life. But we have precious little time for rescuing it. We have violated this sacred waterway through recklessness, carelessness and neglect. If the river dies, we perish.

We live in a confusing age of misplaced values. Why are we afraid to rescue the toxic banks of our rivers? Is it because we’re afraid of the magnitude of what it will cost? It reminds me of a 1928 report of a man called Walsh who said, “Save the river, save the river!” I say “Don’t save the river. Instead, restore it, because restoration is a holy act that gives back that which was taken.”

What was taken from us is our heritage, our pride and our sense of duty towards what the river was and can be. “Can be” is today!

This Summit is the start of a great movement. Ladies and gentlemen, the wind is with us. The tide is now high. The eagle circles above, watching and waiting. Let’s go forward.

RARITAN RIVER CONCERNS

RUTGERS ADMINISTRATOR If people pay attention; if people who can fund things pay attention; and if we work together; we will figure it out.

Toxins are a big concern in the Lower Raritan River Basin, and stormwater runoff is a concern in both its Upper and Lower Basins. Stormwater runoff carries sediment, nutrients and pathogens through Raritan and its distributaries. We need better stormwater management practices if we are to have any hope of cleaning up this waterway.

How do we address this challenge and what do we see as obstacles to fixing this problem? We hear the major obstacle is funding. Money is always the issue in getting these things done. We can’t just keep sprinkling a little bit of money around the watershed and hope for significant improvements in water quality.

The time has come to realize the Raritan is a valuable resource and that our actions are destroying this river. The problems are not just the cannonballs that rebels shot into the river during the Revolutionary War. They were the early deposits of lead into our waterways. Today’s problems are in stormwater runoff from our lawns, rooftops, driveways, roadways, parking lots and farmed fields. They threaten our rivers — and we are all responsible. So, today we’re here to talk about a sustainable Raritan River.

RUTGERS PROFESSOR Like my students, I believe we can restore the Raritan River, as do those of you here today. So, what is the most important issue facing the Raritan?

MALE SPEAKER I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about that question. Since 1904, people have looked at long-term changes to the basin – in quantity and quality. We have much information, but we still don’t understand where, how and why our water quality conditions are changing. Where and what the threats? We have problems.

In many places there is no one chemical causing that impairment. In many cases, we’re seeing alterations to the hydraulic regime. Development in this watershed compromises stormwater by introducing more chemicals and changes its patterns. The river’s current impairments include the quantity and quality of its water.

MALE SPEAKER DuPont’s ad in the August 1935 issue of “American Forest” focused on cutting-edge technology of the time. Headlined “How Dynamite Streamlines Streams,” it claimed: “Crooked streams are a menace to life and crops in the area bordering our banks. The twists and turns of the channel retard the flow and reduce the capacity of the stream to handle large volumes of water. Floods result; crops are ruined; lives are lost; banks are undermined, causing cave-ins.”

With deference to the engineers in the room, that mentality didn’t really change a whole lot, up till very recently. To echo and support the prior two speakers, I think “hydro-modification” altering water’s natural flow through the landscape is probably our biggest basin-wide issue. That’s supported by statistics. There are 254 dams in this basin and 6,671 miles of road – equivalent to 3.3 miles of road for each mile of stream. There are 400 miles of railway corridors, 482 permitted surface water discharges, 81 groundwater discharges and 1,896 known contaminated sites. We have big problems.

The Raritan’s most common impairments are often related to stormwater runoff – water coming off over the land. The top 5 contaminants are pathogens, phosphorus, PH, arsenic and temperature. Remedial obstacles are economic in many cases and include competing interests, a lack of political will and a lack of understanding the problem.

These are long-term and intractable problems in many cases, especially regarding contaminated sites. The technology simply doesn’t exist for quick fixes for these things. We need a long-term view. To overcome these obstacles, I think we must first acknowledge the good work of our elected officials.

EDISON WETLANDS ASSOCIATION

BOB SPIEGEL I am a co-founder of the Edison Wetlands Association, launched in 1989. Our very simple Mission is to clean up and restore 2 sites draining into the Raritan River: a Chemical Insecticide Superfund site [CIC] and the Kin-buc Superfund site. At the time, everybody ignored the Raritan River because its pollution issues seemed insurmountable. That Lower Raritan reach was then called “The Valley of the Dumps,” due to the number of landfills there leaking toxic chemicals into local waterways.

We started with the CIC site, infamous because the rabbits there were “green,” due to their exposure to a chemical called Dynaseb. CIC also made Agent Orange, making it a significantly polluted site. We worked for 15 years; and due to our advocacy, that site is now clean and now an Edison Township Park. So, while these cleaning up sites can take a long time, our success speaks to the fact that, with persistence, much can be done to improve the Raritan River Basin.

Slowly, we’ve addressed conversion of Brownfield Sites to Green Space, via environmental justice conservation and environmental education. We purchase open spaces in the Raritan River Basin, because only by buying them can we preserve them forever. We work with municipalities to share the value of conserving the river and balanced redevelopment of these contaminated sites. We know they must be cleaned up and that many municipalities want tax ratables. But it’s not one or the other. It’s not the environment versus the economy. We can have both.

Edison Wetlands also worked with Keasby Mayor John McCormick on his city’s redevelopment area. We partnered on cleaning up its highly contaminated and radioactive sites, getting a tax ratable and creating major restored green space. For the first time, Woodbridge Township residents and others will have access to the river. We worked very hard on the success of this model.

The Raritan River is a river in recovery; but it’s also a river under attack. From the Fieldsville Dam to the Raritan Bay, very few locations are not impacted by toxic chemical pollution in one form or another. Most of you have seen many of these sites. If not, come out with us for site tours because seeing is believing. If you haven’t been out on the Raritan, you don’t understand its beauty or its challenges.

STEWARDSHIP DIFFERENCES

BOB SPIEGEL One of the biggest problems is the lack of enforcement by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection [DEP]. As we talk about resources to clean up and restore these sites, many sites are leaking heavily into the Raritan River because the DEP is not doing its job. It’s not enforcing the laws or tools that exist.

We’ve had to file federal lawsuits against 3 polluters that the DEP was regulating. The DEP wasn’t doing its job. One site – a mere 100 or so feet from the Edison Boat Basin where people crab and fish, jet ski and water ski – has toxic chemicals seeping from an old chemical lagoon. DEP not only refuses to address this, but it is actively assisting the polluter to fight against us in court. These are challenges that we should not have to undertake; but we do because we want a place safe for families, children and wildlife. We want a place that isn’t polluted – where it’s safe to catch a fish. We want that to happen that in our lifetime. We want to make the Raritan swimmable and fishable again.

Thank you for this conference and the chance to continue this dialogue afterwards.

NJ DEP REPRESENTATIVE I’m not sure where Mr. Spiegel got his version of the facts regarding those sites. I know nothing about them. I do know almost all the case managers and their technical support. They are – without a doubt – the most competent, hardworking and dedicated professionals that any agency could have. I’m sure if they were here, they’d give Bob a run for his money in terms of this debate.

BOB SPIEGEL I’m not sure about that.

NJ DEP REPRESENTATIVE They would.

RESTORING ECOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS

NJ DEP REPRESENTATIVE The biggest environmental problem in the Raritan is easy for me to identify. The Raritan’s system is functioning far below its ecological capacity. Every day, my office grapples with how we can restore ecological functions.

I see 3 approaches to achieving the most uplift to return this system to where it belongs: getting a handle on contaminated sediment; restoring the massive wetlands that have been filled over the last 150 years; and getting anadromous fish runs back up to Clinton. This is a major river system. It deserves a major fish run.

In terms of the sediment, I think Ken mentioned there are over 1,000 hazardous sites in the drainage. Along the Raritan’s main stem, there are probably 150 major sites that have contributed contamination over the years. The Raritan is quite fast-flowing and has coarse sediment throughout most of its length. Thus, it tends to have large depositional areas down in its lower reaches.

One solution to that sedimentation is to get rid of some dams, especially along the main stem of the Raritan. They’re old, and they have way, way, way outlived their usefulness. They’re now impeding the presence of American Hickory, shad, alewives and river herring. These things belong in a healthy river. These things sustain fisheries and other ecosystem components that rely on those fish. I think dam removal is doable. As I said, it’s a major river system, it deserves a major fish run.

MAYOR JUN CHOI When I was sworn into office as Mayor of Edison NJ in January 2006, there were issues we felt were not being comprehensively developed. There was no long-term township plan that addressed all these persistent issues. Bit by bit, on a very practical level and in a very prioritized way, we started tackling them. Given our limited resources, we systematically went through the problems one by one. We organized public education, inviting Edison residents and residents across the entire Raritan River Basin to participate and see the treasure we have.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER I suggest we create a data bank with all this information so we can make sense of the bigger picture. I also want to say it’s not just about standing around waiting for DEP. There are legal tools available for both municipalities and other entities to go after these PRPs [Potentially Responsible Parties] and force them to do more work. It’s not easy; and if DEP would help us more, it’d be a lot easier. But nonetheless, we can do it on our own. Thank you.

MALE at Speaker’s Table The problem we run into, especially in places like the Raritan, is that as we inspect the river and its sites, items we want to examine are swept down river. It’s very difficult when [pollutants] flow miles and miles from their original sources; and in doing so, mix with other contributors. Then you hear everyone say, “It’s not mine.”

Despite what Bob Spiegel says, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of characterizing sites, despite the problems we face out on these waterways. Right now, there’s a question before Judge Goldman regarding Passaic River litigation that addresses that issue. It asks if we, as a government, can be the responsible party to go into these lower reaches of rivers to do natural-resource damage assessments. This is a matter of law that’s before a judge, as we speak.

BOB SPIEGEL The Natural Resource Damages has done a pretty good job with their resources. Edison Wetlands, New York-New Jersey Bay Keeper, Raritan Riverkeeper and the Milltown-ers have modest budgets and modest staff, but we all do a lot. We expect DEP to follow that model and use its limited resources to clean up these sites in the Raritan River.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER There are legal ways to go after these responsible parties. I think that’s the quickest and most decisive way to get things accomplished.

OPEN SPACE PRESERVATION

MAYOR JUN CHOI Edison Township has suffered from a long-standing lack of planning. We’ve over-developed and haphazardly developed. We have probably thousands of units spread out in areas where they really don’t need to be spread out. So far, we’ve preserved about 37 acres. We want to reduce density and then build with a focus on smart planning. We’re now focused on building town centers more like Metuchen’s main street area with its good access to public transportation. We’d shift density to these areas. We think open-space preservation is a key part of long-term stormwater management and just good planning overall. These plans will improve quality of life, reduce traffic congestion, get people out of their cars and encourage walking and biking.

We just kicked off our Edison Trails project with its first leg: a 2-mile trail from Edison Town Hall, along the northeast corridor line and almost out to Highland Park. We’d like to work with utilities, since we have many high-wire tension lines spanning our township. We’d like to get a right-of-way easement for building additional trails to connect our parks to our major centers. Hopefully the history of overdevelopment is over and we can now move towards smarter redevelopment planning.

Unfortunately, in our Raritan River area, pretty much everything that can be developed has been developed. So our focus is to preserve the rest and work with our corporate community, such as Raritan Center, one of the largest US industrial parks. By working with them and partnering with the DEP, we can preserve 600+ acres of remaining wetlands. With smart and focused economic development, we can ensure healthy development.

MALE at Speaker’s Table Humans are an inescapable part of the ecosystem. Thus, in talking about sustainability and balance, we must consider our needs and role in the ecosystem versus those of the ecosystem, since they can be diametrically opposed. We need stability and we talk about restoration to address our 150-200 years of abuse.

One hopeful outcome of today is to begin establishing baselines for restorable targets. We’re not returning to colonial times; and we’re not restoring all the wetlands. We will try to conserve and preserve what we can. We should connect corridors with natural systems. Ideas I’ve heard so far are anthropocentric: a park, riverwalk, trail. What about creating natural areas to support remaining unimpaired patches?

I’ve been in this business about 15 years. So, I’ll conclude by suggesting tradeoffs, compromises and sacrifices. Our ecosystems can’t speak for themselves, so we must speak for them. Let’s ask, What’s anthropocentric? What’s eco-centric? What’s the appropriate balance for the future? I hope we talk more about sustainability today.

BOB SPIEGEL It’s fantastic that Rutgers is prioritizing and rediscovering the Raritan today. Most of the people in the room have already started tackling those issues.

CURRENT STATUS / POTENTIAL CHANGE

AUDIENCE SPEAKER These are questions for the townships in the room. Are your current ordinances effective? How can they be more effective? What tools do you need to help your residents take personal responsibility for their actions at home?

MAYOR JUN CHOI Those are great questions, because ultimately suggestions made today are only going to work and be sustainable if there is a large change of public behavior. Most of that is going to be public education. We’re now working with the Edison Wetlands Association on a new environmental education center for young people throughout Edison.

We’ll offer walks in Dismal Swamp so they can see connections between wildlife and their own lifestyle. We’ll ask them, “If you don’t recycle, what’s is the impact? What’s the impact of certain products and goods not being thrown out responsibly” We want them to see that connection and at a very early age to understand the need for broad-based and successful policies to create lifestyle changes.

One big issue in Edison Township was dog waste. Folks used to walk their dogs along our streets and put their dogs’ waste in their Star Ledger newspaper plastic bags. Then when the next storm comes, those bags go through our stormwater system and often into the Raritan River. That created a horrible, horrible impacts, so we made laws to not allow that anymore.

We need small lifestyle changes that become broad-based. For that to happen, education is critical. The biggest challenges out there are political will and public education.

A REGIONAL SUCCESS STORY

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER I don’t view development and environmentalists as enemies. What’s going on now reminds me of a high school dance where all the boys stay on one side of the room and all the girls stay on the other side. Well, we have developers fomenting among themselves, and people seeking to protect the environment also doing that. We don’t have any dancing.

We need both groups to spend time with one another; open their eyes; and understand legitimate concerns about the environment so we ensure the quality of our drinking water, our future and our natural resources. Developers need to hear that. Environmentalists need to spend time with those in the development community who are creating projects and jobs. We need cooperation between the two groups. My view is that throughout the state, more joins us all than separates us.

It may be that the Raritan is the 14th most polluted river. It may be there are 150 contaminated sites. It may be that people’s river access, use and enjoyment is blocked. This is neither new, nor unique. Hudson River contamination used to be intense in the so-called “Gold Coast” of Weehawken, Jersey City, Hoboken, and industrial dumps along the Hudson River. But go there today and see what has been accomplished! Their environmentalists and developers worked hand in hand, and they reversed 100 years of contamination and pollution. They now have access ways, waterways and parks. A walk will soon connect the southern end almost up to the George Washington Bridge.

Working together where it’s not “us versus them” makes us all one, with interests that can be balanced. We can do for the Raritan what has begun and is flourishing on the Hudson. But we need communication, cooperation — and most of all, understanding. We can accomplish this goal. Certainly, you will have the cooperation of the NJ Office of Economic Growth and the Corazon Administration.

Posted by NWNL on May 8, 2024.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.

1st Raritan River Symposium, 2009 Raritan River Basin