Students search for signs of life, water quality in local streams
By Wendy Plump - 03/19/2007 - Trenton Times
Nathalie Lagerfeld wades into the murky creek next to Princeton
University's Hibben-Magie apartments, kicking up the stream bottom
with heavy boots.
A sophomore at Princeton, Lagerfeld is here on a frigid weekday
morning looking for a positive sign — a stonefly larvae, perhaps,
maybe a waterpenny or a gilled snail.
But when she hauls her tin tray out of the water the only lifeform in
it is a creature with the not-very-appealing name of scud. Not very
appealing and not very hopeful, either, as this is a
pollution-tolerant creature, one of the few that is able to survive in
this little feeder creek next to Lake Carnegie despite the toxins in
the water, according to Lagerfeld.
"Scuds are present in all streams regardless of the water quality,"
explains Princeton junior Sarah Pfau, who is also out looking for
aquatic life in the stream this morning. "The presence of
pollution-sensitive organisms in a stream is indicative of a healthier
stream. But they are not here. Instead we always find the scuds and
aquatic worms, and they can tolerate almost anything."
Lagerfeld and Pfau are members of the Princeton Chapter of the New
Jersey Community Water Watch, a statewide group that urges students
and residents to become involved in the monitoring and health of the
very streams that run through their backyards and neighborhoods.
Lexi Gelperin, a Princeton native who now works for AmeriCorps out of
a university office, runs the Princeton Water Watch. Gelperin keeps
the group's efforts going with Lagerfeld and Pfau and a steady corps
of university students. But she is looking for broader involvement
from Princeton residents of all ages and abilities.
"New Jersey really does have among the worst water quality in the
country, with 75 percent of our waterways designated as too polluted
to fish in," said Gelperin, citing a water quality report released
last month by the state Department of Environmental Protection. "But
if you just say that, it turns people off. The problem feels too huge
and un-doable. So what we do at Princeton Water Watch is localize the
problem, wake people up to the fact that it is a problem that affects
them and then give them the tools to do something about it," she said.
"If you take people to a stream and show them, look, there's only two
kinds of bugs in this stream and there should be hundreds, this is
proof that they can put their hands on."
The Princeton Water Watch organizes stream monitoring, educational
programs and clean-up projects in the Princeton area. It concentrates
on Lake Carnegie, its feeder streams on campus, the Springdale Golf
Course stream, as well as Harry's Brook and tributaries of the Stony
Brook-Millstone waters.
The DEP report, released Feb. 15, analyzed New Jersey's waterways in
seven categories that indicate a healthy environment: aquatic life,
recreation, drinking water supply, fish consumption, shellfish
harvest, industrial water supply and agricultural water supply.
While the report found that New Jersey's drinking water supply is
clean and adequate, water quality in other areas was not. "The DEP's
monitoring data show that many waters are not meeting DEP's water
quality goals for aquatic life, fish consumption and freshwater
recreational uses," said a news release detailing the report.
Ethan Lavine, an associate with Environment New Jersey, based in
Trenton, agreed with the report's findings.
"We have a toxic legacy from manufacturing and chemical plants, a huge
and growing threat from development, a destruction of habitat, and
we're denuding 50 acres of open space every day," said Lavine. "The
health of aquatic life in a stream is really the canary in the
mineshaft when it comes to water. It shows they could get much worse
if we don't take action."
That is where Gelperin and her Water Watch comes in. One of the
biggest challenges is simply public awareness. The stream next to
Hibben-Magie, for instance, does not have a name, a fact that Gelperin
finds "sad and indicative of our lack of connection to the
environment."
Gelperin, who grew up on Harrison Street, said, "I didn't know what
Harry's Brook was when I was growing up, and it's a huge creek. Kids
learn about the environment in school but they don't learn about the
streams that are in their back yards."
Gelperin lists three actions that residents can take to begin to
improve their waterways: Become educated about organic lawncare and
use organic lawncare companies; plant more bushes, shrubs and trees
around creek beds to preserve the soil and prevent erosion and runoff;
join the Princeton Water Watch and participate to any degree possible.
