By Allison Perrine
MONMOUTH COUNTY – Clean Ocean Action (COA) is rebranding its “Rally for the Navesink” initiative to expand its focus on improving water quality for both the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers.
The announcement was made Jan. 28 during COA’s virtual rally meeting as officials renamed the “Rally for the Navesink” initiative the “Rally for the Two Rivers,” underscoring how interconnected the two waterways are. The goal of the movement remains the same, however: to make the rivers healthy for fish, shellfish and families, according to Alison Jones, COA’s watershed program coordinator.
“As interconnected water bodies, the water quality of the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers are inextricably linked and suffer from similar impairments. A watershed-wide approach is needed to effectively address the issues in both rivers,” she said. “As the Rally for the Two Rivers, we will seek opportunities for pollution reduction by engaging new partners throughout the Shrewsbury River watershed, while leveraging our ongoing successful collaborations in the Navesink watershed.”
The initiative first began in 2016 with the Navesink being the primary focus due to the severity of the pathogen pollution, which resulted in the downgrade of about 565 acres of shellfishing habitat, COA reported. And while efforts are still in place to identify the “few remaining” sources of pathogen pollution, levels in the river have significantly decreased due to the years of work from the Rally for the Navesink program and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
However, other water quality impairments have become more of a cause for concern since then, with the number and severity of fish kills and algal blooms increasing, COA said. The Shrewsbury River has the same impairments, including pathogen pollution.
“Healthy rivers are integral to our well-being and link communities. COA’s Rally for the Two Rivers strives to do just that with proven, collaborative approaches to science and education,” said COA’s staff scientist Swarna Muthukrishnan, Ph.D.
Jones said COA is hoping to improve upon several goals in the next few months for the initiative, starting with enhancing municipalities’ stormwater ordinance enhancements. As part of a DEP mandate, all municipalities in New Jersey must update their stormwater management codes by March 2 in order to comply with the latest guidelines. However, Jones said she thinks towns in the Two River area can do better.
“That’s just a baseline and we think that some of the towns could do better, especially in our area where we know that we have stormwater runoff issues,” she said.
“We’re really ultimately urging towns to pass the Watershed Institute’s enhanced stormwater ordinance,” Jones said. That includes “really fantastic provisions that would really give towns a lot of control over development and how stormwater is managed on sites that are developed.”
Jones noted that COA realizes it’s a lot for municipalities to pass under the Watershed Institute’s ordinance, so she highlighted the five main takeaways from it that she hopes towns adopt in the area: onsite retention of stormwater with green infrastructure; the enhanced definition of major development; inclusion of clearly defined penalties for noncompliance; include and specify better requirements for maintenance, including maintenance of green infrastructure; and use of nonstructural best management practices.
“We’re always trying to move people from pavement to gardens, to trees, so that we start moving away from those hard surfaces and start getting beautiful lush gardens that do a lot more than just soak up the rain,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of COA.
An additional goal COA hopes to reach in the new year is water quality monitoring, including the pathogen levels at 16 locations in the two rivers, participating in road salt studies and continuing to explore opportunities to resume routine pathogen monitoring with citizen scientists, according to Jones. It also plans to address education and outreach initiatives, including a Watershed Mindfulness Toolkit and events such as Rumson’s Rally for the Rivers Eco-Fest and more.
Members of the volunteer-based Oceanport Water Watch Committee have been monitoring the water quality in the Shrewsbury River for years, COA said, which provides the organization with “a thorough understanding of the current water quality conditions in the river.” Going forward, the Rally for the Two Rivers plans to focus on preventative actions to maintain the water quality improvements achieved over the past few years, it said, while addressing the pollution in both rivers.
“Oceanport Water Watch Committee is a group of citizen science volunteers that has been in existence for 30 years, for which I have been involved with for 13 years,” said Tom Cox of the Oceanport Water Watch Committee. “Once a month we sample nine to 10 sites around the shores of Oceanport in the Shrewsbury River and occasionally a bit upstream. There is usually low fecal content in the main part of the Shrewsbury River.
“However, there are exceptions upstream at Turtle Mill Brook. That area sometimes produces high levels of bacteria, especially after heavy rains that you can see diluting as the water flows downstream,” he added. “Originally the goal was to get Monmouth Park Racetrack to clean up their act which turned out to be a success. The work continues not only to keep an eye on the park but also to monitor the recent reuse of the Fort Monmouth sewerage system.”
The article originally appeared in the February 4 – 10, 2021 print edition of The Two River Times.
