Trees provide valuable benefits and contribute to the beauty of the Raritan region. They add value to our property, filter the air, provide oxygen, cool our homes and neighborhoods in the summer, block the wind to reduce our heating costs in the winter, capture and filter runoff to protect our streams, sequester carbon from the […]
Pollutants from contaminated sites can seep into groundwater or run off into adjacent surface waters where they can negatively impact water supplies and cause ecological damage to wildlife and fisheries, as well as pose a hazard to public health. Superfund sites in the Raritan region are under the jurisdiction of the US EPA Region 2 […]
New Jersey’s natural landscape supports an amazing array of habitats that provide critical services including flood storage, water and air filtration, recreation, and support for wildlife including endangered, threatened and special concern species. New Jersey’s Landscape Project, was initiated by New Jersey’s Endangered & Nongame Species Program in 1994, to document habitat for threatened and […]
Open space provides a myriad of enhancements to quality of life in the Raritan. These spaces are often vegetated and minimally developed, providing many of the same benefits as canopy cover such as species habitat, carbon sequestration, temperature modification, oxygen generation and air purification. Open space can also store floodwater or filter runoff to enhance […]
A myriad of trails and greenways crisscross the Raritan Basin. They range in size and popularity from the 69.5 mile Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail that enjoyed over 1.38 million visitors last year (NJDEP 2018c), to the 15 mile Columbia Trail along the South Branch of the Raritan in Hunterdon/Morris counties, to small […]
Traveling by boat is one of the best ways to reap the salutary effects of blue spaces like the Raritan. The main stem of the Raritan offers over 75 paddling miles occasionally interrupted by dams and weirs with the first (Island Farm Weir) approximately 20 miles upstream from the river’s mouth in Perth Amboy. Getting […]
Stormwater basins are meant to protect downstream areas from flooding and erosion by capturing and then slowly releasing rainwater and melting snows. They generally take the form of retention basins, detention basins, infiltration basins or some hybrid of these. Retention basins have an outlet higher than the base elevation of the basin and may retain […]
Much of the older urban development in the Raritan Basin was not designed to route runoff through stormwater management basins. Instead, the stormwater drainage systems collect runoff from dwelling roofs, yards, driveways and streets (i.e., on-street storm sewer grates) and discharge it directly into the nearest stream (i.e., at an outfall) with no treatment. River […]
Culverts, constructed of concrete, brick/clay, iron, corrugated steel and corrugated aluminum, are commonly used to enable stream crossings for roadways. If not properly positioned, sized and maintained, they can impede fish passage, restrict stream flows, increase stream velocity, become clogged with debris and sediment, increase the likelihood of contaminated road runoff entering waterways, and generally […]
Bridges can impact quality of life on the Raritan in a number of ways. They may be a direct source of potentially contaminated runoff, bridge structures may impede boat travel along the river, or the structures may capture debris during high flows and exacerbate local flooding. Many bridge surfaces drain directly to water bodies they […]
