CivicsTory Blog

Careful sampling and analysis is crucial to maintaining clean water sources and cleaning up polluted ones, but keeping constant track of water quality across thousands of miles of rivers and streams in New Jersey is a daunting task - one that would be almost impossible to do properly without crowdsourcing the work to a largely volunteer network. 

Hundreds of dams in NJ, built for various reasons over the centuries, have outlived their usefulness, fallen into disrepair, and are causing harm to the local ecosystems. CivicStory interviewed Jim Waltman, Executive Director of The Watershed Institute, about strategies for restoring the health of NJ waterways by removing dams.

Protecting and restoring the waters that drain the Delaware River basin is a complex undertaking with multiple players from all the states that share the river as a resource. The Coalition for the Delaware River Watershed’s annual forum convened stakeholders on issues ranging from stream designation to cross-state policies and innovative partnerships.

The 2019 Stormwater Utilities Symposium focused on upcoming changes in stormwater management rules, and the best ways to mitigate (mostly urban) flooding, a problem that threatens to get worse with climate change.

Jersey Water Works convened experts to brainstorm ways to fix and finance improvements to New Jersey’s aging water infrastructure. The meeting highlighted the state of New Jersey’s water systems, how to fix them, and perhaps most frustratingly, how to pay for fixes.