Vol. 5 No. 2 Fall 1997
A Newsletter About New Jersey's Water Quality Programs

A national report detailing increasing threats to the nation’s water supplies cites New Jersey as a leader in water quality protection and credits the state for forging the right course through its new, watershed-based programs.

Noting technology cannot purify all drinking water supplies, as evidenced by the 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee that killed 103 persons, the report calls for greater watershed protection efforts, a new strategy in which New Jersey leads the way.

"Perhaps nowhere is the redirection in water system management more evident than in the state of New Jersey," according to the report, released by the Trust for Public Land, a national land-preservation organization. It lauds the state’s new water supply master plan for advocating a shift from expensive water treatment system expansions to watershed acquisition and protection.

The acquisition of Sterling Forest, where ground and surface waters provide 25 percent of New Jersey’s drinking water, was cited as a recent example of how purchasing watershed lands protects water supplies, saves tax dollars, and provides increased recreational opportunities as well. The report cited unrestricted development and the resulting nonpoint source pollution as the greatest threats to the nation’s drinking water.

The report also cites the need to protect wetlands due to their ability to retain and filter water, and for water monitoring to more closely measure changes in water quality.

In recent years, DEP has developed several initiatives to protect New Jersey’s water supplies. These include new programs to speed the removal of leaking underground storage tanks, establishing pumping restrictions to avoid depleting critical drinking water supplies known as aquifers, and aggressively pursuing Superfund and other site clean-ups where ground water supplies are threatened. Two sites in New Jersey were recently taken off the Superfund list after five years of tests showed the ground waters were no longer contaminated following extensive clean-up work. In addition, the DEP’s popular Green Acres program has not only provided hundreds of thousands of acres of recreational space, but also has helped protect water supplies through the purchase of critical watershed lands.

In the northern Highlands of New Jersey alone, where much of the state’s drinking water is found, Green Acres funds have been used to acquire over 85,000 acres since 1961. In the last three years, the state has purchased or placed under contract nearly 14,000 acres there, including 3,900 acres of the Pequannock Watershed in West Milford which serves Newark; 2,430 acres of Jersey City’s watershed lands in Jefferson Twp.; a 2,480-acre tract in Rockaway in the core of a watershed area there; another 1,500 acres surrounding Splitrock Reservoir in Rockaway; 1,419 acres in West Milford and Ringwood, including watershed lands of the Wanaque Reservoir, and the adjoining, 975-acre Buck Mountain.