P.C. Robinson – Stormwater Matters

‘More than a public hearing:’ Conference offers tips on advocacy, collaboration

P.C. Robinson — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 21:57:05 +0000

Education and collaboration.

Those seem the best ways for local officials to fix critical stormwater issues like runoff and flooding, conditions that are only worsening with climate change.

They are also essential for community advocates interested in pushing those officials to correct long-standing flooding and water quality issues, so say Michael Pisauro, policy director of the Pennington-based The Watershed Institute, and the institute’s Community Engagement Manager, Kendra McKoy.

Read more here.

Seeing A Spark Switch On

P.C. Robinson — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 02:06:21 +0000

While it’s true that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” as that classic Joni Mitchell folk song goes, it’s also true that you don’t know what you’ve got till you’re shown.

It’s a premise shared at the Great Swamp Watershed Association, the Harding-based environmental group borne out of the need to save the Great Swamp from turning into a massive jetport 60 years ago.

It’s certainly a premise known too well by Hazel England, the association’s director of education and outreach and Sandra LaVigne, director of water quality programs, who have been educating students on the need to preserve and protect water quality both upstream and down.

Read more here.

Downstream or up, education key to improving water quality

P.C. Robinson — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 19:00:36 +0000

While the federal Clean Water Act has been around for half a century, water quality remains a top concern, especially in New Jersey.

Whether upstream, downstream, or mid-stream, how healthy one’s drinking water is is no topic to be ignored, especially as both man-made pollutants, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, used in various manufacturing processes, and natural ones, like arsenic and radon, constantly threaten to infiltrate drinking water thanks to ground seepage and stormwater runoff.

Added to those woes is also the condition of aging infrastructure, including sewers so old they permit an infusion of lead.

To be sure, the challenge of ensuring pristine drinking quality is extensive and all-consuming, requiring a cast of thousands to ensure that quality is achieved, either at headwaters or the end of the faucet.

In fact, it’s not enough for multi-level rules and regulations to be enforced to monitor water quality. True, it takes money – lots of money – and lots of lobbying to persuade state and municipal officials to overhaul decaying infrastructure.

But individuals, from kids to adults, can do their part in helping ensure water quality. It just takes a little knowledge – and the availability of that knowledge – to add a rain garden or plant native grasses, or just clean up litter and those presents left behind by that pet.

So, how do you engage them?

The answer: educate – and participate.

Read more here.

Water, water, everywhere — but is it safe to drink?

P.C. Robinson — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 18:34:39 +0000

The ground could be bone dry until, one day, a tiny, wet splotch shows from an underground spring.

That splotch is followed by another and another and they merge with other streams or lakes to create a river system that becomes an invaluable life resource: drinking water.

Such are the streams and tributaries of the New Jersey Highlands Region, part of a tri-state habitat of environmentally sensitive land on which is birthed the headwaters for numerous rivers that, collectively, nourish some 800,000 people, or about 70 percent of the Garden State’s population, according to the New Jersey Highlands Council.

Those rivers include the Raritan River and the Passaic River, rivers that quench the thirst of those in urban areas to the east.

Of course, it’s imperative those headwaters be pristine, and as droughts – or floods – alter water tables the need to ensure high drinking water quality, especially in that watershed region, for all is a double imperative.

Read more here.