By Karyssa D’Agostino
MIDDLETOWN – More than 60 people concerned about plans to build a controversial pipeline in Raritan Bay gathered at Bayshore Waterfront Park May 31 to send Gov. Phil Murphy a message: Say “No” to NESE.
The activists, who came from the local area and also New York, fear the installation of the William Transco NESE pipeline extension and compressor could disrupt the ecology of the Raritan Bay and impact coastal communities.
People of all ages came out to make signs, sign petitions and listen to local officials and organizers speak against NESE at the rally sponsored by Clean Ocean Action.
“A near 32,000-horse-powered fracking gas compressing station is going to pollute Central Jersey even more with benzene, formaldehyde, methane, cancer causing chemicals – in an area that already has an ‘F’ grade by the American Lung Association and air quality and ground zero level ozone,” said Junior Romero of NJ Food and Water Watch.
The economic toll the pipeline could potentially have on Bayshore communities is also a concern.
“A lot of these families depend on the recreation, as well as some of the industries that go on in the bay,” Cliff Moore, an economic development consultant in the Bayshore towns of Highlands and Keansburg. “The pipeline would disturb that.”
Residents fear the pipeline will negatively affect future generations. Lisa Cordova of Middletown, standing with her daughter Luna and two friends, Madison and Scarlett Schreibman, said Murphy must “oppose this pipeline permanently.” She added, “The future of our children rests on it.”
In between speeches, Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, asked the protestors to call the governor’s office and urge him to say no to NESE. She asked them to tag Murphy on social media and use the #saynotonese hashtag.
“Now that Gov. Cuomo (of New York) has stated his clear opposition to this project, it’s now time for a resident of this town and a resident of Monmouth County to stand up and deny the needed permits for this pipeline,” said Middletown Mayor Tony Perry, urging Murphy to reject the project.
In addition to calling and tagging Murphy on social media, protestors signed a banner, petitions and wrote him letters, hoping he will deny the needed permits for this project.
CLINGING JELLYFISH
RUMSON – Clinging jellyfish have not been seen in the Navesink River since 2016, according to Bill Heddendorf of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
And as of May 30, they’ve not been detected in the Shrewsbury River, where they were found more frequently in recent years.
That news was met with some relief by residents gathered at the recent Rally for the Navesink meeting at Bingham Hall.
But stay on guard, Heggendorf advised. This is around the time the dime-sized jellyfish that cling to eel grass make themselves known to humans with their terribly painful sting.
Over in Barnegat Bay and Point Pleasant, clinging jellies have shown up, concerning locals and swimmers. Finding the tiny clinging jellyfish in their sea grass habitat can be hard, so the NJDEP has considered obtaining a genome sequencer to help identify where they are gathered. This would allow them to do an environmental DNA analysis simply by analyzing collected water, and, as an additional benefit, determine their species.
Clinging jellyfish can be either of the Mediterranean or Chinese species, Heggendorf said. Both species of the clinging jellyfish have been found in different parts of New Jersey, but the kind found in the Shrewsbury River were of Mediterranean decent and the ones found south in Barnegat Bay and the south bank of the Metedeconk River in Point Pleasant were of Chinese descent.
An interactive map showing the location of reported clinging jellyfish observations can be found at the state DEP’s website, njbeaches.org.
BUOYS TO HELP PREDICT FISH KILLS
Eight buoys identifiable by a solar panel and orange light will be placed in the Navesink River in coming days. The buoys are part of an effort by the DEP to understand the cause of fish kills, like the one in March at Red Bank’s Marine Park.
Fish kills can be caused by pollutants, natural causes or environmental factors. The DEP’s buoys can detect dissolved oxygen levels, salinity, chlorophyll, temperature and chlorophyll-a. The data will allow the DEP to act sooner if changed levels in the water are coming from a natural cause like an algae bloom or from an unnatural pollutant which needs to be mitigated, like pesticides, detergent and biotoxins.
Heddendorf explained the buoys cost around $100,000 each and about the same to maintain yearly. The funding comes mostly from the state with some funding coming from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The buoys will allow the DEP to see oxygen levels in real time, before a fish kill occurs, and will be placed in the river in very early spring next year. Heggendorf said the DEP determined the cause of March’s large bunker fish kill at Marine Park was unusually warm weather which caused a rapid bloom of algae in an area with a large number of bunker fish.
“You had a drop-off of about 30 degrees in the area temperature the next day – so what happened then is the algae started to die off,” Heddendorf said. “What happens when those algae die off, the decomposers that are decomposing then take up all the oxygen in the water leading to very low dissolved oxygen levels.”
This essentially choked off the bunker fishes’ oxygen, leading to the large fish kill, he said.
