New
YorkReport
News from the MWA
Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey
Story by Ann Quigley
By Carter Craft and Ethan Yankowitz
Edited by John Bollinger
New Jersey’s Meadowlands, like most open space
so close to a metropolis, have long been the subject of land-use
debates. Behind-the—scenes battles between protectors and
would-be wetlands developers continue today, with each closely
watching the other’s moves.
Take the February appointment of two Meadowlands Mills mega-mall
supporters North Arlington Mayor Leonard Kaiser and South
Hackensack Township Committeeman James Anzevino to the New
Jersey Meadowlands Commission. If approved, the mega-mall could
swallow up nearly six hundred Meadowlands acres in Carlstadt. If
the state senate approves the nominations, “we will just be more
vigilant,” says Hugh Carola, program director for Hackensack
Riverkeeper.
“One of us will be in attendance at every commission meeting,”
Carola says. “We won’t let them run roughshod over the
commission.”
Environmentalists were cheered earlier this year when the NJ
Meadowlands Commission voted to withdraw from SAMP (Special Area
Management Plan), a local, state, and federal effort to balance
development and protection of nearly 8,000 wetland acres. “The
SAMP wars raged for over 10 years,” Carola says.
With holdings of over 1,900 acres protected as open space, the
commission is the largest owner of wetlands in the Meadowlands.
The commission recently added to its bounty by agreeing to buy 94
acres of wetlands from Bloomberg Radio for $1 million.
“Mills will probably get to build somewhere in region,” says
Carola, of the Arlington, VA corporation proposing to build the
mega-mall. “But there’s no way they are going to get a
wetland. Despite the stumblings of the current governor, his word
is good,” he adds. “He is sticking to his campaign promise”
to protect the Meadowlands.
On another wetlands note, while Dr. Kirk R. Barrett doesn’t give
a clean bill of health to the Meadowlands, he says its water
quality is improving. Barrett, the Research Director of the
Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI), the research
arm of the Meadowlands Commission, is in the midst of a 2-year
fish and sediment inventory of the Meadowlands.
Barrett and colleagues have been taking monthly fish samples from
21 Meadowlands locations, and 28 species have turned up so far.
White Perch, Gizzard Shad, Striped Bass, Striped Killifish,
Mummyichog, and Atlantic Silverside make up the majority. “The
Meadowland fish community is abundant,” Barrett says.
The Whole Bay’s Slipping Away
A year after a blue ribbon panel of scientists
convened to investigate the mystery, Jamaica Bay marshlands are
still disappearing fast.
“They’re going at a rate of 5,000 square feet a day,” says
Dan Mundy, a member of Jamaica Bay EcoWatchers and founder of the
Jamaica Bay Task Force (JBTF), “I’m looking out my window and
can see changes weekly and monthly.” Mundy first noticed marsh
shrinkage about five years ago, and his observations were later
confirmed by a NY State Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC) study.
Jamaica Bay’s whimsically named marshes, like Little Egg, Silver
Hole Marsh, Duck Point, and Pumpkin Patch Marshes, provide food
and shelter for hundreds of bird and fish species, as well as
buffer Queens and Brooklyn shorelines from crashing waves.
But most of these marsh islands will be gone by 2024 unless we act
quickly, says Mundy, who is frustrated by the slow pace of change.
“There’s nothing in place stop the damage,” he says. “We
need to add sediment to areas that have died off. We need to do
some plantings.”
Planting Spartina grass, a type of marsh grass, may not be a
miracle cure, but it’s something. “Something is better than
nothing,” says Mundy. “If a patient is dying you try to do
anything you can to save them, right?”
Everything possible is being done to stem the marsh loss, says
Billy Garrett, the National Park Service superintendent for the
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. “This is just the beginning of what
will be a big project,” he says, involving understanding the
causes of the losses, preserving existing wetlands, and restoring
wetlands.
“There’s not a single point source to blame for this,”
Garrett says. “That’s why we need to be looking at this as a
whole system, and trying to understand it as a system.²
MWA Waterfront 2002 Conference: May 15
*The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is a
growing network of organizations and concerned individuals
dedicated to helping this region reclaim and reconnect to our
greatest natural resource—the harbor, rivers and estuaries of
the New York and New Jersey waterfront.
The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance works
through education, grassroots organizing and media advocacy to
include the public’s voice and values in the decision-making
that will determine the future of our region’s waterfront and
waterways.
