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| Multifaceted approach needed to stem Multifaceted approach needed to stem "brown tide"
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 07/5/07BY ANDREW WILLNER Microscopic plants and animals such as algae and diatoms, like the recent "brown tide" event in Raritan and Sandy Hook bays and along parts of the ocean last month, are unattractive and smelly — and are symptoms of a greater problem. These occur fairly often during late summer, but what is surprising is that this bloom occurred so early in the season and was so widespread. The common trait of these blooms, especially algae, is that when they die and begin to decay, a condition called hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen, can occur. Causing odors and potentially fish kills, hypoxia is, in part, the result of too much nutrient in the water. Nitrogen is a pollutant we don't talk about much. It is a necessary component of the estuarine ecosystem, but when there is too much of it being discharged from sewage treatment plants, from combined sewer overflows and from runoff from pavement, lawns and farms, it is a major pollutant. No sewage treatment plants in New Jersey have nitrogen limits in their discharge permits (and only one plant discharging to the estuary has tertiary treatment, a method of removing nutrients from the effluent). In New York, only five plants have limits. Because these plants exceeded their limits, the Baykeeper and Long Island Soundkeeper brought legal action against those plants and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to put them back on track to compliance. The storm water regulations that all New Jersey municipalities recently adopted do not specifically address nitrogen pollution. But they do say that no new major development or redevelopment can have a deleterious effect on water quality. Although not explicit, it is certainly implicit because a significant amount of the nutrients come from our urbanizing shore. All discharging municipalities and authorities for combined sewer overflows were due to submit the long-term control plans by the beginning of April. Most of these plans fall far short of addressing the reduction of combined sewer overflow events and improvement of the water quality in the receiving waters. Working with the other regional waterkeepers, Baykeeper has engaged the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation on this issue by proposing two less costly, more environmentally protective, methods. The first, low-impact development addresses storm water and combined sewer overflows by preventing water from getting into the pipes in the first place — by using green roofs, rain gardens, urban creeks, rain barrels and green streets to slow down the flow of water, thereby reducing both the impact and the necessity for huge very expensive end-of-the-pipe mechanical solutions for storm water and combined sewer overflow control. The second suggestion, a continuation and scaling up of Baykeeper's oyster restoration project, could address the effects of nutrients until the regulations, land use decisions and compliance fall into place. Oysters, as well as other filter feeders, are indiscriminate filterers. What is digestible, they eat, and what is not is eliminated as pseudo-feces, a little droplet of matter that is everything the oyster cannot use as food. An adult oyster can filter nearly 50 gallons of water a day. Our plan is to add hundreds of millions of oysters to the waters of the harbor over the next five years. You do the math. And third, the Baykeeper and our partners have protected through acquisition and easements nearly 10,000 acres of important wetlands and upland habitat, a natural filter for nutrients. We need to preserve the unprotected natural habitat that remains. If low-impact development, habitat protection and Oyster habitat restoration are combined, they still may not entirely solve the problem of a brown smelly bay or coast. But they could help to prevent blooms such as we have been seeing, add an enormous amount of buffering and filtration, restore an important part of the ecosystem, help to prevent events where dead menhaden wind up on our beaches and kick-start what must be a bistate/federal effort to compel a reduction of nutrient pollutants from entering the harbor estuary. Andrew Willner is the baykeeper for the bays of the New York-New Jersey Harbor and is executive director of New York/New Jersey Baykeeper, a Keyport-based environmental advocacy and conservation organization. | ||||||||
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We can not build our way out of the problem and get all the necessary pollutant reduction from new devlopment, no matter how low impact the design.
There is an existing massive infrastructure problem that must be retrofit - CSO's, stormwater impoundments, outfalls, upgrading sewage treatment plants et al. This will cost billions, but no one seems to have the leadership to call for anything that might cost real money.
Noting the NJ sewage treatment plant do not have nitrogen limit in discharge permits is great, but why not demand that NJ DEP impose them?
Why sue NY sewage treatment plants to enforce compliance with existing limits and get marginal pollution reductions while NJ facilities don't even have limits? Are the courts more friendly to envrionmental litigation in NY?).
Folks should know that DEP is fully aware of the lack of nitrogen limits in NJPDES permits -- they have conducted pilot studies of nitrogen removal, and found that nitrogen loadings can be reduced by over 60% cost effectively with changes to current treatment processes. Greater load reductions can be achieved if new treatment technology is installed. But DEP fails to act because sewer authorities oppose new DEP regulations and they have the politicians adn the press of the state duped into thinking that this will raise property taxes and sewer rates.
The problem lies in Trenton, not in our Stars (or in NY).
Preservation of 10,000 acres is fantastic, but NJ is losing aver 15,000 acre of land A YEAR. Buldout is on the horizon, so fairly radical land use controls are waranted, yet ignored as we race towards the buildout cliff.
What good is "low impact design" when we are still massively paving over land and building new buldings where we shouldn't? Allowing storm damaged or flooded properties to be rebuilt in the same spot. Insane.
Stormwater controls must be retrofit - low impact design on new development can never solve this problem. It is absurd to suggest that low impact design substitute for lack of CSO controls in NJ's older urban areas.
Sormwater planning and engineering costs money - the last two Govvernor's have diverted millions of dollars of existing bond funds.
We need billions of dollars for clean water infrastructure - we need enforcement of envrionmental laws. We need major growth management controls in the coastal zone.
What we don't need are low expectations and panacea's.
Posted by: paribus on Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:25 pm
Posted by: NJCynic on Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:04 pm
Seasider
Posted by: seasider on Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:56 am