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Hackensack
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[Hackensack Riverkeeper Inc][Hackensack River Watershed] [Hackensack River Watershed map]
[Pontoon Boat Cruises]
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"One day not so long ago, Kathy Urffer, Hackensack Riverkeeper's operations director,
watched a couple of crabbers hoist a tub full of blue claw crabs off their boat at Laurel
hill County Park in Secaucus. The crabbers were laughing, enjoying their good
fortune and no doubt looking forward to a seafood feast when they got home to their
families. Blue claw crabs were good eatin'. Or so they thought.
"Alarmed but determined, Kathy approached the men and explained why they cannot,
under any circumstances, take those crabs home and eat them. They are, she said,
full of cancer-causing dioxin and other poisonous contamination's. These crabs are
so dangerous that a person's risk of cancer skyrockets if you eat more than one every 20
years! Incensed that the river's rich resources had been stolen from them -- stolen
from all of us -- the crabbers went home without their catch but with information that may
save their lives.
The Hackensack Riverkeeper initiatives:
1. Organize river clean ups (12 in 2004), stream restorations (created a riparian buffer
along Coles Brook with more than 1,500 native plants in 2003) and river-based recreation
with canoe and kayak rentals.
2. Monitor and work with hundreds of policy-makers who have jurisdiction over watershed
issues. This included wetlands preservation in the Meadowlands, New Jersey's new storm
water regulations and the extension of Category One protections to the Oradell Reservoir,
Lake Tappan, Woodcliff Lake and the drainage's of the Hackensack River, Pascack Brook and
their tributaries.
3. Education by bringing more than 5,000 people to the river each season via Eco-Cruises,
Eco-Walks and Guided Canoe Trips and bring the river to the people through an extensive
outreach program to school, community and environmental groups.
4. When necessary, the Hackensack Riverkeeper assumes the role of citizen prosecutor to
ensure compliance with environmental regulations. The State of New Jersey has
realized more than $1 million in polluter's fines on cases that the Riverkeeper has
initiated or assisted.
The Hackensack Riverkeeper has a staff of five full time employees and a cadre of
dedicated volunteers.
Source: Hackensack Riverkeeper's letter June 28, 2004
www.hackensackriverkeeper.org
####
Overview
Location: Hackensack River -- New Jersey, New York
Threat: Urban development
Source: American Rivers
Summary
The Hackensack River and the Meadowlands in New York and New Jersey face rapidly
escalating development pressure that threatens to destroy a significant portion
of the largest block of wetlands left in the region and increase the amount of
pollution entering reservoirs that supply drinking water for one million
people.
This year, federal,
state and local authorities must demonstrate resolve to protect the river from
an unpopular proposal to construct an enormous shopping, entertainment, and
office complex and take steps to slow new developments which are multiplying on
the reservoirs upriver.
The River
Flowing right through the heart of the New York City metropolitan area, the
Hackensack River winds south from Rockland County, New York, into New
Jersey where it empties into Newark Bay. The river's estuary -- the Meadowlands
-- is the last large block of open space in this densely populated region.
Although most of the
Meadowlands' original white cedar swamps have been replaced
with phragmites (a common reed), the area still supports a remarkable
diversity and concentration of birds, fish, and other animal life, including 55
rare and important species of birds and 29 rare or important species of fish. The
area has been designated Essential Fish Habitat by the National Marine Fisheries
Service.
The Risk
Once comprised of roughly 21,000 acres of wetlands, open water, and lowland forests,
the Meadowlands has been reduced to about 7,000 acres of
wetlands today -- and development pressure is unrelenting.
Since 1995, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC), and the New Jersey
Department of Environ-mental Protection have been developing a Special Area
Management Plan (SAMP) to guide development in this ecologically
sensitive area.
The current draft of
the SAMP allows for 465 acres of Meadowlands' remaining wetlands to be filled
for development and does not impose limits on impacts -- such as polluted runoff
-- to surrounding wetlands. An Environmental Impact Statement for the SAMP
has never been completed.
A developer has
since proposed to construct an enormous shopping, entertainment, and office
complex on 206 of those acres. In addition to the outright destruction of a
large block of habitat, the mall and its associated parking lots would produce
large volumes of runoff, carrying high concentrations of pollution, such as
grease and heavy metals, into an estimated 300 acres of surrounding wetlands.
Although the EPA is
leading development of the SAMP, it has joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service in opposing this
development due its severe impacts on the entire Meadowlands ecosystem and the
ready availability of suitable alternative sites for the complex.
The project cannot
move forward until the developer receives a permit to fill the wet-lands from
the Corps of Engineers. During the preparation of a draft Environmental
Impact Statement for the development last fall, the Corps received 9,000 public
comments -- 85% of which strongly objected to the project.
Development pressure
is also mounting in the upper reaches of the river, and the forested buffers
that historically surrounded the drinking water reservoirs on the upper river
have been disappearing.
The private company
that owns and operates the local drinking water system has created a real estate
company to market these lands for development, and in places the buffers have
been reduced to strips only 50 feet wide.
The loss and
fragmentation of riverside habitat will result in more
polluted stormwater and runoff reaching the reservoirs, threatening the
quality and quantity of drinking water. Remaining margins of open space for
local residents will also vanish.
What Can Be Done
Federal, state, and local agencies have compelling reasons to exercise their
authority to prevent further damaging development and to strengthen protection
of the Hackensack and the Meadowlands.
The Corps of
Engineers should heed the concerns that local citizens and federal and state
agencies expressed during the preparation of their Environmental Impact
Statement and deny the permit for the proposed shopping center development in
the wetlands. Other more suitable sites are readily available nearby and will
bring jobs and economic development to the very same communities.
The
remaining Meadowlands marshes should be given permanent protection by
federal and/or state agencies, and the SAMP should be finalized with the primary
goal of conserving -- not developing -- the Meadowlands.
The
long-delayed Environmental Impact Statement on the SAMP should be revived
and completed through an open and public process. The agencies involved in
developing the SAMP should set an explicit standard of allowing development only
if it can be demonstrated to be compatible with protecting the estuary.
Local communities
along the upper Hackensack River's remaining forest buffers should act to
protect the habitat that protects their drinking water. Riparian forests and
other existing open space tracts within the watershed should be protected
through such methods as land purchase, conservation easements, and development
setbacks.
#####
History
Source: www.hackensackriverkeeper.org
The Hackensack River: A True Come-Back Story
As rivers go, the Hackensack is certainly one of the world’s smallest (only 32 miles
long) and one of its most urban (nearly 20 million people live within a short drive or
train ride from its banks), but it is a river steeped in history.
The process that eventually formed the river began some 15,000 years ago when a finger of
the Wisconsin Glacier retreated, scouring and compressing bedrock to form what
paleontologists have named Glacial Lake Hackensack. Not long after this major geologic
event, the first humans arrived along the shores of the lake, joining wooly mammoths,
giant sloths, saber-toothed cats and six-foot tall prehistoric beavers in this fertile,
ice-free wilderness.
As the millennia passed, much of the compressed bedrock slowly rose up out of the lake
much like a pillow does after you press down upon it with your hand; for a little while
the impression of your hand remains but soon it is gone. What rose up out of the lake
became the Hackensack River watershed. Over time, the watershed assumed the shape we
recognize today: bounded on the north by the High Tor Mountains, the east by the
Palisades, the west by the Watchung foothills and the south by Newark Bay.
Over those same millennia, various plant communities took their turns as the dominant
species within the watershed. This botanical evolution culminated by the 17th
century with an immense marshy forest of tamarack and Atlantic white cedar that covered
most of the lands along the river.
During the same time period, the humans living here made a good life for
themselves, taking from the waters, forests and meadows what they needed to survive and
thrive. No longer the wandering Stone Age hunters of old, the Lenape people knew exactly
where they were; they were home in their own land, the land they called Lenapakoking whose
river they called Atchensehaky – the “River of Many Bends.”
Europeans first sailed up the river they renamed Hackensack in the early 1600s. After
their arrival, Dutch (and later English) colonists created a prosperous European enclave
that soon pushed the Lenape out of the place they had lived for thousands of years. The
rivers and tributaries that had once known only the paddling of dugout canoes soon saw a
thriving commercial boat trade that lured pirates who took advantage of the concealing
forests to base their attacks. The British thought they'd take care of these marauders by
setting fire to the tamaracks and cedars. Of course, this did not rid the area of pirates,
but it did make short order of a good bit of the forest.
By the late 1700s, the population had grown steadily around the ports of New York and
Newark. Soon river traffic was joined by road traffic that required the construction of
dozens of drawbridges spanning the Hackensack River. Before long, railroads began to
crisscross even the formerly impenetrable marsh now know as the New Jersey Meadowlands. At
that time, the region’s population was growing at a breakneck pace. Unfortunately,
this growing population turned to the Hackensack and other waterways of the region as a
place to dispose of the waste they generated. Waterborne diseases became rampant as the
waters became repositories for all sorts of filth.
With population also came new demands for drinking water and in 1869 the Hackensack Water
Company was founded to supply water directly from the river to Hudson and eastern Bergen
Counties via a network of pipes. By 1882, the company constructed a filtration plant on
Van Buskirk Island in Oradell to remove the sediments and other debris that often clouded
their product. This “river-to-consumer” system was flawed since during times of
drought, demand for water nearly drained the river dry.
By the end of World War One, the water company could no longer meet the water demands of
the still-growing population within its service area. A reservoir was needed. On the
company’s behalf, the state of New Jersey began condemnation proceedings against
landowners along the upper reaches of the Hackensack River in order to acquire their
property. In 1921, construction of the
Oradell Dam was begun and completed two years later, creating the Oradell Reservoir.
Eventually, three more reservoirs were dug to satisfy the ever-increasing need.
Today the Hackensack Water Company is no more and it is United Water New Jersey that
provides water to over one million people from the river’s upper watershed
– one of the most urbanized drinking water resources in America. With very little
forested buffer lands remaining, Oradell Reservoir, Woodcliff Lake, Lake Tappan and Lake
DeForest are ringed by golf courses, residential subdivisions, major roadways and other
development – much of it built with the blessing of the water company. In 1989,
United Water dedicated a new, state-of-the art water treatment facility to counteract the
polluted runoff entering the reservoirs. Today the question is: How long will that
facility remain effective?
Harnessing the Hackensack’s upper watershed did something else in addition to
providing drinking water: it effectively created two rivers, a freshwater ecosystem above
the Oradell Dam and a brackish water estuary below it.
The lower reaches of the river suffered tremendous degradation during the Industrial
Revolution of the 19th and early 20th centuries. From the city of
Hackensack south to Newark Bay, factories spewed untold gallons of untreated waste into
the river. Raw sewage and refuse of all kinds were dumped in and near the river. This
toxic legacy has left hotspots of chromium, PCBs, mercury and other contaminants
throughout the river’s ecosystem.
The most dramatic feature of the Hackensack’s lower watershed is, without question,
the New Jersey Meadowlands. At one time
stretching over 32 square miles and encompassing nearly 25,000 acres of wetlands and
waterways, the Meadowlands has been reduced to only a third of its former size. From the
moment the first European colonist landed, the days of the Meadowlands were numbered and
the landscape began to change dramatically. First came logging, then ditching, diking and
draining of the marshes to try and “reclaim” the “noxious swamps” for
farm and pasture land. Later, towns like Moonachie and Little Ferry were founded on lands
that at one time were wetlands.
The biggest change that befell the Meadowlands however happened seven miles north of it
– the Oradell Dam. Until it was built, the Hackensack River flowed clear and fresh
for almost its entire length. Its strong and steady flow kept the salty waters of Newark
Bay from intruding more than a couple of miles upstream. In one fell swoop, an ecosystem
that had evolved for 15 millennia as a freshwater lowland forest was transformed into a
tidal estuary. For the plants and many of the creatures that lived there, there was hell
to pay.
The abrupt and unnatural change in the river’s water chemistry eradicated the few
surviving stands of tamarack and white cedar that had been spared the axe. Freshwater fish
like small mouth bass and chain pickerel could not survive. Cattails, wild rice and other
freshwater wetlands plants were also killed of and, by the 1940s, common reed (Phragmites
communis) became the dominant plant species in the Meadowlands. Coupled with
centuries-long attempts to drain it, the Meadowlands appeared as if it were dying.
It was during this same time that the Meadowlands was transformed into a regional garbage
dump. Garbage trucks from scores of municipalities and even Erie Railroad hopper cars
filled with trash were unloaded into the wetlands. Today we can count 34 historic
dumpsites. On several of them, fires would spontaneously combust and some would burn
underground for years. Smoke from these burning heaps choked the skies and further fouled
the waters.
By the early 1970s however, things began to change – both for the better, and again
for the worse.
First the better:
· After the
passage of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972, the river’s downward spiral was
arrested as federal and state regulations began to take effect. Towns were forced to treat
their sewage. Changes in the region’s economic base also benefited the river as
polluting industries were replaced by non-polluting service and information technology
businesses.
Now the worse:
· As the
river got cleaner, sprawl development took over as the major villain in the race to kill
the Hackensack River. The new economic base devoured wetlands at a breakneck pace as
warehouse complexes; hotels, office buildings and entertainment venues were built on
hundreds of acres of fill.
Now a combination:
· In 1970
the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC) was created by the State of New
Jersey to serve as the zoning authority for the Meadowlands District. It was charged to
regulate (and eventually stop) the flow of solid waste into the District, implement
environmental regulations and to provide for “orderly development.” While their
first two charges were beneficial to the river, the last one was problematic because it
put the HMDC “in the business” of destroying wetlands. |
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the conservation community in New Jersey had begun to
take notice of issues involving the Hackensack River – both in the Meadowlands and in
the upper watershed. Local advocacy groups were founded to fight for environmental
preservation and to ensure public input. Organizations like the Quality of Life Coalition
in Secaucus and Bergen SWAN in Westwood were instrumental in stopping improper development
on hundreds of acres in the watershed. The two “big dogs” of the watershed
– United Water and the HMDC – started to feel the heat.
It was into this mix that a cabdriver named Bill Sheehan decided to do something.
Beginning as a volunteer with New York/New Jersey Baykeeper’s Boating Auxiliary, he
founded the Hackensack Estuary and River Tenders Corp. (H.E.A.R.T.) in 1994 to help keep
an eye on the river. After attending the 1997 Waterkeeper Alliance Conference as a guest
of Baykeeper Andrew Willner, he was asked by Alliance President Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to
submit a proposal for the creation of a Hackensack Riverkeeper program. The proposal was
approved and that same year, Bill founded and became executive director of Hackensack
Riverkeeper, Inc. The rest, as they say, is history.
“This organization was founded on one simple premise: Human beings, in fact all
living creatures, have an inherent right to clean water,” Capt. Bill explains. Today,
the remaining 8,400 wetlands acres of the Meadowlands have been rezoned for conservation
under the new Master Plan that was enacted in February 2004. As a result of advocacy
efforts by Hackensack Riverkeeper working in cooperation with the Governor and the New
Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, New Jersey has extended Category One
protections to Oradell Reservoir, Lake Tappan, Woodcliff Lake and the entire upper
watershed of the Hackensack River. This designation protects the drinking water supply to
nearly 1 million people in New Jersey and New York.
Despite these recent conservation victories, our work is hardly over. Given that our staff
of five and dedicated cadre of more than 300 volunteers reside in the most densely
populated spot in America, the work continues. Through our Eco-Programs and public
outreach, close to 10,000 people each year receive an up-close and personal experience of
the Hackensack River. We distribute nearly 60,000 copies of Hackensack Tidelines each
year. We coordinate numerous river clean-ups and riparian restorations and our Watershed
Watch Hotline (1-877-CPT-BILL) is always open.
Most importantly,
Hackensack Riverkeeper continues to build coalitions to combat urban environmental
pollution and to make the polluters pay to clean up the messes they’ve made. We
instigate investigations and provide testimony in cases brought against corporate
polluters. We were instrumental in turning the HMDC into the New Jersey Meadowlands
Commission (NJMC) and redirecting it to become a conservation-driven agency. We helped
stop the loss of forested buffers that United Water allowed in the 1980s and 1990s and are
working with the utility to promote our state’s Phase Two Stormwater Regulations and
implement the Category One protections.
After all, people not only deserve clean water, they want clean water. And
open space protection. And a Meadowlands Preserve. And we’re on the job to help turn
those wants into realities.
While we certainly
celebrate our recent victories, we also understand that winners write history. For far too
long, the “winners” in our watershed were the polluters and sprawl developers
but today, the tide as finally turned. The people of the watershed have been empowered to
be the stewards of their river and it is they who are writing the next chapters of its
history. Now, that’s something to celebrate.
Work to Save the Meadowlands, Not Pave the
Meadowlands.
Source: www.hackensackriverkeeper.org
#####
Links
[Hackensack Riverkeeper Inc][Hackensack River Watershed] [Hackensack River Watershed map]
[Pontoon Boat Cruises]
[Riverfest 2004 June 12,
2004] [Canoe & Kayak Club]
[Hackensack River Watershed Fund] [Teaneck Greenway]
[Riser Ditch Index] [Berry's
Creek] [Berry's Creek Map] [NJDEP][NJ Waters]
[WWC Research Center]
Contacts and local partners
Betsy Otto, American Rivers, 202-347-7550, botto@amrivers.org
Capt.
Bill Sheehan, Hackensack Riverkeeper, 201-692-8440, captain@keeper.org, www.hackensackriverkeeper.org
Andy
Willner, NY/NJ Baykeeper, 732-291-0176, nynjbay@keeper.org,
www.nynjbaykeeper.org
Richard
Kane, New Jersey Audubon Society, 908-766-5787, http://www.njaudubon.org/
#####
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