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Write us at: ACROSS THE Visit us at: P.O. Box 300 568 Tempe Wick New Vernon, NJ 07976 WATERSHED Harding, NJ 07976 Winter 2006 The Great Swamp Watershed Association Vol. 26 No.1 To Sewer Or Not To Sewe r That Is The Question As The NJDEP Holds Hearings On “Abbey Woods At Delbart o n ” by Julia Somers & John Malay On January 5, 2006, NJDEP held a public hearing in the Morris per month in maintenance fees to live in, and will include no Township municipal building in Convent Station. The subject was affordable income units. Despite rumors to the contrary, no retired the Abbey Woods at Delbarton’s request for a site specific Water monks will live there. Quality Management Plan amendment. It began at 1:00 p.m. continued till 5:00 p.m., began again at 6:00 p.m. and continued Broken Promises until everyone had testified. During a previous set of DEP hearings eleven years ago (February As a result of this hearing and the additional comments it will 17, 1994) on an earlier sewer line plan, Abbot Brian Clark, the generate, the Department will decide whether or not the Delbarton monastic superior of St. Mary’s Abbey at Delbarton, testified: property can be sewered to permit a Continuing Care Retirement “I can say that we have a master plan reaching into the next century Community. Without sewering, there will be no project. which includes no development of our property as far as selling property The Great Swamp Watershed Association and numerous other or selling property to developers. Any development of our property has environmental, conservation and land use groups strongly oppose this to do with additional buildings or facilities or fields that will enhance the present proposal to build a 250 unit high-end commercial facility on 41 Delbarton School… I would like to stress that point because in the press acres of the Washington Valley because the project: I have seen suspicions expressed that perhaps we intend to do a lot of developing or selling of our property.” ■ is located next to the Jockey Hollow Section of the Morristown National Historical Park, the nation’s first The sewer line was eventually permitted and installed at public national historical park; expense, based on the sworn testimony that there would be no non- school related development in the future. Unfortunately, the ■ is located in Planning Area 5 of the State Development suspicions on that occasion turned out to be warranted. The current and Redevelopment Plan (Environmentally Sensitive); continued on page 9 ■ is located in the Highlands Planning Area; ■ is located in a National Historic District; ■ includes property with Category One waters and Annual Event Raises Over $35,000! exceptional value wetlands; ■ includes Landscape Project Areas 4 and 5 for threatened and endangered species (barred owl, coopers hawk, red shouldered hawk, wood turtle and possibly Indiana Bat) ■ will require the loss of 3,153 large, mature trees and removal of 344,000 cubic yards of fill; ■ is located on very steep slopes and is mostly forested; GSWA does not believe the project meets the state’s stormwater r e g u l a t i o n s . The project features units that will have purchasing prices ranging Details & Photos On Page 11! f r o m $ 1 , 4 7 5 , 0 0 0 to $435,000 each, will cost from $8,300 to $3,300 We protect the water and land in your town! www.greatswamp.org Rubbing Salt into Environmental Wo u n d s by the GSWA Science and Technology Committee “Hey Mom, it’s snowing. Do you think school will be closed?” into Great Swamp for much, but not all, of this transfer. The Chatham Township situation is typical of the ten towns in the To the joy of every kid, 6 inches of snow fell on December 9, watershed, and it is typical for high-population-density communities 2005. Almost all schools closed but shopper and business traffic in the northeast. combined with the snow to create hazardous conditions. Plows and salters could be seen on almost every street as towns prepared for Operating under the auspices of the Great Swamp Watershed business as usual. The salting and sanding may have made driving safer Association, the GSWA Stream Team has monitored water quality but the problem created by the salt will still be with us long after and flow characteristics for years. Their primary attention has focused the snow is a distant memory. on four major streams feeding Great Swamp (Primrose Brook, Great Brook, Black Brook, Loantaka Coping with adverse weather Brook), as well as the Upper conditions is a part of life. The Passaic River and its outlet from tragic hurricane experiences Great Swamp through the during the late summer and fall Millington Gorge. The Stream of 2005 suggest that this situation Team expends special attention on is likely to intensify in years to Loantaka Brook through its “Adopt come. Winter storms in the a Stream” project. Among the Northeast and upper Midwest several key contaminants that the sections of the U.S. also create Stream Team detects and vexing problems, demanding quantifies in Loantaka Brook, attention to sustain normal sodium and chloride ions, human activity. Snow and ice on components of common table salt, roads, parking lots, driveways, and are major concerns on account of sidewalks pose obvious dangers to their potential for environmental moving about, whether in damage. Not only do the test vehicles or on foot. In particular, results clearly show the presence of these ions in relatively high police, fire, and medical emergency vehicles require passable concentration during winter months, as would be expected, but roadways at all times. These demands have resulted in a dramatically they also show a persistence into spring, summer, and autumn, rising use of salt as a de-icer on impervious paved surfaces. Needless indicating long-term contamination of ground water resources. to say, the 55 square miles of the Great Swamp watershed have been a participant in this trend. As with so many other management Usage of road salt in the U.S. has risen dramatically over the last policies, the widespread winter application of salt for de-icing has 65 years. Records show that in 1940 the amount was 160,000 tons. generated a collection of unintended secondary consequences that The corresponding numbers during subsequent years exhibit are worrisome. Salt water corrosion of automobiles and bridge deck explosive growth and are now over a hundred times higher, in the structures are annoying, potentially threatening, and ultimately neighborhood of 20 million tons per year. This steep upward trend expensive, but other road salt consequences occurring at the same shows no obvious sign of abating. A well-recognized consequence of time are the degradation of the quality of the local drinking water supply this rising usage has been the death near roadways of many salt- and the damage to plant and animal life in the watershed. These intolerant trees, including the sugar and red (swamp) maple species deserve at least equal attention. that are prized for their colorful autumn displays. To put the situation into concrete terms for the Great Swamp Consequences of road salt application have become the subject watershed, note that this area presently contains 282 miles of of serious scientific study. A recent example was published by a roadways. One of the ten towns within the watershed, Chatham group of eight qualified experts in the peer-reviewed journal Township, accounts for 37 of those miles, and reports that it spreads Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It has captured approximately 500 tons of road salt each winter. The salt eventually press attention, and has become the subject of a widely disseminated dissolves, of course, and adds to other contaminants making their way continued on page 8 into the local streams and ground water. Storm sewers act as conduits 2 - www.greatswamp.org We protect the water and land in your town! From the Desk of the Exe c u t i ve Dire c t o r Across the Watershed is a quarterly publication of the Great Swamp Watershed Association. The Watershed 2006 is the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Great Swamp Watershed Association. My, Association is a membership-based non- but time does fly! profit that protects drinking water, and In 1981, a group of like-minded people incorporated the Watershed Association as a 501(C)3 in preserves land to maintain the natural the belief that it was high time an organization had as its sole focus the Great Swamp watershed – beauty and enhance the livability of y o u r the entire 36,000 acre watershed – because without a regional, watershed approach, the marvelous t o w n . resources of this special place could never be effectively preserved or protected. We are the headwaters of the main stem of the Passaic River, one of the State’s major river systems. B o a rd of Tru s t e e s The river provides drinking water for well over one million residents, and the watershed’s shallow Officers aquifers provide private well water for thousands more. We know that everything we do on the land Daniel D. Harding, Chairman affects the quality of our drinking water. It also benefits/protects or damages the environmental habitat David A. Budd, Vice Chair available for the unusual variety of vulnerable species (flora and fauna) extant here. Anne Essner, Secretary Our wealth of preserved open space covers more than one-third of the watershed.

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