Water Works 43 - 2/11/04

What Do You Think of First, When You Think about New Jersey?

Last Thursday’s Star-Ledger says the Morris County town of Parsippany wants to buy water from Jersey City’s reservoir. Growth in Parsippany has “overtaxed” its public wells, and the NJDEP is forcing it to find other water sources before it can continue to grow. (i) It’s good to know the NJDEP is cracking down hard on the kind of poor planning that might harm the state’s water supply.

Franklin should be so lucky. Of course, we’re not an intensely developed suburb with a complex water supply system serving more than 50,000 people. Our municipal water system consists entirely of individual household wells. We only have about 1,100 of them spread across a township of Parsippany’s size, and only about 100 around Quakertown, before we add the NJDEP’s share of water use here – equivalent to 900 more. (38) Even though Quakertown’s “overtaxed” aquifer didn’t result from poor planning by Franklin Township, and though the water down there belongs to us and not the state (33), we should expect tough competition for attention in Trenton when we’re up against a place like Parsippany, which created its problem all by itself.

Am I being realistic about that situation – Commissioner? – Senator?

“Ahh…Jersey!” – Jean Shepherd used to sigh, whenever his subject was us. Even over the radio you could almost see him shaking his head, as if he could never quite believe his luck – a front row seat for a spectacle as absurd as any story of his own. Perhaps more so. We’re nothing like the Indiana Shepherd knew as a boy. New Jersey ranked among the most affluent and educated states long before he left the airwaves. You might think we would tend to be smarter too, but you only need to hear one of Jim Gearhart’s drive-time rants or scan the headlines at PoliticsNJ on the web, to wonder if Weird New Jersey is missing the strangest stuff of all.

Life in New Jersey without a taste for the ridiculous must be sheer torture. I couldn’t live that way. But never forget what Water Works is laughing at: the mismanagement of our state’s water supply. We all own it, and you’re paying to protect it while you’re paying to destroy it. When the NJDEP finally begins to undo the damage it has done here, that will cost you money too. “Ahh…Jersey!”

Although it ruined a good day, that Star-Ledger story gives me the chance to develop a subject barely mentioned in our last episode, chronic low water flows in Lockatong Creek. (42) Whenever you overtax an aquifer by pumping its groundwater beyond its recharge rate (32), apparently what Parsippany did, you reduce the flow of surface water in neighboring streams. Channeling and terracing, which describe themselves, and stream beds that seem too large for the amount of water in them are the most common symptoms. Since we have Parsippany handy, I will try now to put the full impact of low flows here in its largest possible context. I can bore you with the details next week.

Signs of chronic low water flows are obvious almost as far down the Lockatong watershed from Quakertown as you can get. (22) One of the best examples is on a bluff high above the Delaware, less than two miles up-river from Stockton, at the last road the creek crosses before it reaches the river. The Lockatong has left the Hunterdon Plateau behind it then (38) and the creek winds through a steep, woody slope there, headed for a final dive down the valley wall. That stream bed should have more water in it. There seems to be no apparent reason nearby. Fewer people pump water from that bluff, and from anywhere between that bluff and the plateau, than at our end of the creek.

The Lockatong is the longest of the streams that drop from the heights above the highway from Frenchtown to Stockton. The old place-names on the roadside echo what you see – Raven Rock, Federal Twist, Tumble Falls. That stretch of the Delaware is one of America’s Wild and Scenic Rivers, in fact. Where the river bends east above Stockton, the bluffs retreat from the bank and farms roll out over the prehistoric shoals. There, just 32 miles farther from Manhattan than Parsippany, Lockatong Creek slips out from a grove of trees at the edge of one of those farms, dips under a bridge on Highway 29 and flows through a culvert into the old D&R Canal, next to the river. If you climb up from the road, cross the towpath and look down into the canal, you’re looking at the water that 10 thirsty, growing Parsippanys drink every day.

“Ahh…Jersey!” Indeed.

Ron Gutkowski