Algae Blooms, Dead Bunker (Menhaden), Low Dissolved Oxygen,

Microscopic plants and animals such as algae and diatoms, like the recent “brown tide” event in Raritan and Sandy Hook Bays and along parts of the ocean last month are unattractive and smelly – and are a symptoms of a greater problem. These occur fairly often during late summer, but what is surprising is that this bloom occurred so early in the season and was so wide spread. The common trait of these blooms, especially algae is that when they die and begin to decay, a condition called hypoxia or low dissolved oxygen can occur. . Causing odors, and potentially fish kills, hypoxia is in part the result of too much nutrients in the water. Nitrogen is a pollutant that we don’t talk about much. It is a necessary component of the estuarine ecosystem, but when there is too much of it being discharged from sewage treatment plants, from combined sewer overflows (CSO’s), and from run-off from pavement, lawns, and farms, it is a major pollutant.

No sewage treatment plants in New Jersey have nitrogen limits in their discharge permits (and only one plant discharging to the Estuary has tertiary treatment, a method of removing nutrients from the effluent), and in New York only 5 plants have limits, and because of exceedences Baykeeper and Long Island Soundkeeper brought legal action against those plants and the NY City DEP putting them back on track to compliance. The storm water regulations that all New Jersey municipalities recently adopted as ordinances, do not specifically address nitrogen pollution, but they do say that no new major development or re-development can have a deleterious affect on water quality of the receiving waters. Although not explicit, it is certainly implicit because a significant amount of nutrients come from our urbanizing shore.

All discharging municipalities and authorities for CSO’s were due to submit the Long Term Control Plans by the beginning of April 2007. Most of these plans fall far short of addressing the reduction of CSO events and improvement of the water quality in the receiving waters. Working with the other regional Waterkeepers, Baykeeper has engaged NJDEP and NYDEC on this issue by proposing three less costly more environmentally protective methods. The first, Low Impact Development or LID, addresses storm water and CSO’s by preventing water from getting into the pipes in the first place – by using green roofs, rain gardens, urban creeks, rain barrels, and green streets to slow down the flow of water, thereby reducing both the impacts and the necessity for huge very expensive end-of-the-pipe mechanical solutions for storm water and CSO control.

The second suggestion, a continuation and scaling up of Baykeeper’s oyster restoration project, could address the effects of nutrients until the regulations, land use decisions, and compliance fall into place. Oysters as well as other filter feeders are indiscriminate filterers. What is digestible they eat, and what is not is eliminated as pseudo-feces, a little droplet of matter that is everything the oyster cannot use as food. An adult oyster can filter nearly 50 gallons of water a day. Our plan is to add hundred of millions of oysters to the waters of the harbor over the next five years – you do the math.

And third Baykeeper and our partners have protected through acquisition and easements nearly 10,000 acres of important wetlands and upland habitat, a natural filter for nutrients. We need to preserve the unprotected natural habitat that remains.

If LID, habitat protection, and Oyster habitat restoration are combined, they still may not entirely solve the problem of a chocolate brown smelly Bay or coast – but they could help to prevent blooms such as we have been seeing, add an enormous amount of buffering and filtration, restore an important part of the eco-system, help to prevent events where dead menhaden wind up on our beaches, and kick start what must be a bi-state/federal effort to compel a reduction of nutrient pollutants from entering the Harbor Estuary.