Officials: Improving Shore water quality will take time

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By TODD B. BATES
Gannett New Jersey

Enhancing coastal water quality will require controlling stormwater runoff in the region and overflowing sewer systems in the New York-New Jersey Harbor area, according to officials.

And that will take years, they said.

People also must stop leaving trash on beaches, limit runoff from their properties and curb use of lawn fertilizers, observers said.

"I would say that water quality has improved from where it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but there's still a long way to go," said John S. Kushwara of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 2 office in New York City.

Until people stop dumping debris on shorelines and the combined sewer overflow issue is solved, debris will need to be removed from harbor-area waters, said Kushwara, chief of the Monitoring and Assessment Branch.

A government Floatables Action Plan for locating and capturing slicks of debris has been very successful, he said.

When it rains, combined sewage and stormwater sewer systems in New York City and North Jersey spew untreated toilet waste and street runoff, according to a New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program fact sheet.

Debris such as trash, grease balls, tampon applicators and syringes can later wash onto Bayshore and oceanfront beaches in New Jersey.

Twenty years after big trash wash-ups on New Jersey and Long Island beaches ignited public outrage, ocean water quality is much better, officials said. But it's still influenced by the weather, currents, stormwater, combined sewer systems in the harbor area and other factors.

"I think that, on balance ... we've made significant improvements," said Andrew J. Willner, executive director of the NY-NJ Baykeeper group based in Keyport. "If everything was fine, if everything was hunky-dory, I wouldn't have a job."

Compared with two decades ago, when many hypodermic needles and other items were washing ashore, "they've done ... a much better job in terms of policing and cleaning up sites," said Michael J. Kennish, a research professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

"Beaches are cleaner," he said. "It was a real mess at the time when ... they had a series of events."

Still, when winds come from the north or northeast, the plume of water that flows around Sandy Hook "will come in, usually impacting somewhere along northern Monmouth County," said William Simmons, environmental health coordinator in the Monmouth County Health Department.

The plume can reach more than 93 miles south of the harbor along the New Jersey coast, according to a document on the health department Web site.

"The best winds for our beaches are from the southwest," which are the worst for Long Island, Simmons said.

"Somebody loses," he said.

Meanwhile, "the biggest problem is still nonpoint pollution and the stormwater volume," Simmons said.

Nonpoint source pollution, or people pollution, is contamination of ground water, waterways and the ocean from everyday activities such as fertilizing the lawn, walking pets, changing motor oil and littering, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection Web site.

When it rains, pollutants are washed into storm drains that flow into waterways and the ocean. They also can soak into the ground and contaminate ground water, the Web site says.

"Every time you go from a woods (area) to black top," stormwater volume increases 16-fold, Simmons said.

Dealing with nonpoint source pollution and coastal lakes is "where the push has to be," said Sidney B. Johnson Jr., health officer for the Monmouth County Regional Health Commission No. 1.

"Everybody has to take steps to reduce the amount of ... runoff from their property, try to infiltrate the runoff" on their property, Simmons said.

People can direct rainwater from their gutters onto their lawns instead of driveways, for example, Simmons said.

"It's called low-impact development," he said.

DEP research scientist Virginia Loftin said "the public can stop feeding their lawn so much" with fertilizers, which help "cause excessive growth of algae in the ocean."

Some area residents, interviewed at local beaches recently, also stressed the need for people to take all their trash and then some away from beaches.

As a result of 2004 DEP stormwater rules, towns are coming out with ordinances addressing the stormwater issue, Simmons said.

That will have "a huge impact on water quality" when the rules are implemented, but it will take a while, he said.

Cynthia A. Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, a Sandy Hook-based coalition, said ocean water quality, while it has improved dramatically, "still depends on the weather."

"If there's ... no rain, no pain," Zipf said. "The water quality is nice ... for the most part, and you can expect that coming to the shore. ... But if it rains, we get the runoff from ... the most densely populated urban area in the country and the result of that is garbage on the beach and polluted water."

Polluted runoff also is destroying the coastal marine ecosystem, Zipf said.

Water quality in back bays, such as Barnegat Bay, and coastal lakes and estuaries is getting worse, she said.

That's because of runoff, underground infrastructure problems, increased impervious surfaces, greater lawn fertilization and increased population, she said.

"In fairness, the Hudson River-Raritan River estuary has gotten a lot better over the last 20 years," but it also needs a lot of improvement, Zipf said.

She thinks people's awareness and concern for environmental quality has improved in the last 20 years, and that's hopeful and encouraging, she said.

Still, water quality at the Jersey Shore is "really precarious" and any breakdown in programs or infrastructure can result in problems very similar to those of the summers of 1987 and 1988 "raw sewage on the beach, floatables, garbage slicks," she said.

Robert J. Ingenito, environmental health coordinator for the Ocean County Health Department, said citizen complaints to his office are "very few and far between."

Water quality is "a lot better" than 20 years ago, he said.

"Because of our lack of (stormwater) outfalls to the ocean, we don't normally have a problem with the ocean except for what can come in from the outside," such as trash coming from boats or ships, Ingenito said.

"They seem to have controlled what's coming out of the New York area a lot better than they used to," he said.

But if a beach in another county gets a wash-up, people consider the whole coastline to be polluted, he said.

Both New York City and New Jersey have made progress in controlling pollution from their combined sewer overflows, said Kevin Bricke, deputy director of EPA Region 2's water program.

The next step for them is to develop and implement long-term control plans to meet water-quality standards, he said.

Bricke guessed that it will take New York City about 15 years to complete projects to capture about 75 percent of its combined sewage overflows for treatment. But much of the 75 percent already is being treated, he said.

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