Water Works 34 - 7/22/03

Wilfredo Returns

“I reverence truth as much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost, and can neither of us do well without – I’ll go to the world’s end with him.”

That’s telling them, Shandy. Water Works would have settled for less than a mile, actually, from the wells at the Garden State and Quaker Valley complex to Quakertown – over the low rise just south of the village, crossing from the Lockatong to the Capoolong side of things, then down to the greenswale below Quakertown Road that we’ve already talked about, a little way from my place. I’m at Muller’s spring again, with Fellow Correspondent, Concerned Citizen and Wilfredo.

Viewed from its Quakertown Road side, the village edition of Good Steward is everywhere in sight in the swale, as if a small troop of scouts camped by the ponds there sometimes and looked after things in exchange for the favor. As soon as you finish your first look around it practically commands you to sit, and not rush anything as you take it all in.

While the road right behind us bends abruptly downhill, westbound, tucked inside the ridge where the land rises on the north side of the village, the swale tilts only gently in the same general direction as the road, until the two finally meet further on where the road bends again on its way down to Pittstown. The fields in the swale and the few farm ponds they surround act together as what a geologist would call a “natural collector” of water, which is of course what all good swales do.

It’s precisely among the string of properties running along this natural collector of water that one of the two largest concentrations of well failures in the neighborhood occurred, which is why I’ve been trying to get you here for so long. Now that we’ve made it, here’s my plan. First, we will take the shale blocks, bedding planes and verticals, soils, cones of depression and hydraulic heads we have been playing with lately, and set the whole works in motion beneath our feet. Then we will observe things from a few other perspectives, including Concerned Citizen’s neck of the woods, and compare our findings with the NJDEP’s. We will start when Water Works returns after a break for preparations.

While we are all still here I should address an issue implicitly raised by last week’s Water Works: that Franklin Township’s defense of our water supply pits us, somehow, “against agriculture.” On that question I defer to the proceedings of the Hunterdon County Agricultural Development Board, which earlier this year sought the advice of the Franklin Planning Board regarding the environmental impact of the amount of impervious coverage at the Garden State and Quaker Valley complex, in a matter referred to the CADB by the Appellate Division of New Jersey’s Superior Court. In its precedent-setting decision, the CADB agreed with nearly all the recommendations Franklin made, and all the ones we considered most important.

Excuse the intrusion. I don’t mean to make this story any more complicated than it is already. Managing the material I have to work with now is trouble enough. I’m only trying to avoid becoming what English textbooks call the “unreliable narrator.”

In the same spirit I should also disclose that I don’t really hold regular chats with a hand-puppet Italian economist. I just sound that way a lot. And when I seem stranger than your typical crank on a hobby-horse (truth is, I could never make Franklin’s all-eccentric squad, even in a good season) it’s usually because I have to keep things moving along here with an occasional story-telling device or convention of nomenclature – which, come to think of it, is what this tale of ours has begun to resemble more than anything else lately.

We really have assembled quite a crowd. It’s time we all got back to work.

So – Let’s rouse the Good Stewards, Wilfredo! – Call Leviathan – Muster the irregulars – Head down the Delaware to Trenton, scouts! The NJDEP knows it’s gone to the well too often here, but those blockheads could spring a new game on us anytime, for all we know. Citizen, Correspondent – you fellows look after the high ground with Best Practices. And where the rest of us are concerned – until we meet again (at Muller’s spring) – it’s “Hi ho, Water Works, away!” for you and me, Ron Gutkowski.