Water Works 25 - 4/28/03

We Interrupt Our Story to Say Something Nice about the NJDEP

We interrupt our continuing story for this announcement.

On April 22, Sidney Brook and Rockaway Creek, tributaries of the Raritan River, were designated C-1 waterways by Governor Jim McGreevey and NJDEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell.

To someone who played as a boy in the mud flats near Raritan Bay, the distance New Jersey has traveled to reach last week’s milestone is nearly as remarkable as our continued enthusiasm, in this 21st century, for public officials who still find the protection of the public’s water supply a controversial issue.

In Hunterdon County, where we routinely vote overwhelmingly for candidates of that stripe, our appreciation should be that much keener for the enormous political risks Jim McGreevey took to protect our streams here. About as far from home as a Woodbridge Democrat can go, he achieved what our team never thought to try, as we registered Republicans all know.

Bradley Campbell’s job may have been even tougher in some respects, unfamiliar as he was with New Jersey’s peculiar political folkways, some of which must be lived to be believed, including regional specialties like what one of Sidney Brook’s more outspoken defenders calls “the angry mob with pitchforks.”

So, while my relentless hounding of the NJDEP for its indefensible record in the Lockatong watershed will resume next Monday, exactly where it left off, it would be unforgivable now not to say to Governor McGreevey and Commissioner Campbell: congratulations, gentlemen, on a tough job well done, and thank you.

Ron Gutkowski