PETE PICKNALLY/Courier-Post The Ran-Del Marina sits at the mouth of Rancocas Creek in Delanco Twp.

JEF DAUBER/Courier-Post

Along the banks of the placid Rancocas Creek in Mount Holly is a forest less than four months old.

Planted with the help of dozens of volunteers, the forest of scattered chest-high sycamores, red maples, river birch, sweet gum--all native species--represents a new wave in efforts to protect New Jersey's waterways, including the Delaware River.

The two-acre forest at the Iron Works Park will someday mature and act like a sponge to filter out pollutants now carried by stormwater runoff into the main stem of the creek, just yards away.

This forest land, known as a riparian buffer, is just a small step. But it exemplifies what needs to be done along streams that feed into the river, state officials say.

This new approach to waterway protection is called watershed management, a strategy that takes a holistic approach toward improving the health of major waterways such as the Delaware by trying to clean up their tributaries.

It attempts to tackle a type of pollution that is virtually impossible to stop, unless people reduce the amount of pesticides and fertilizers used on farms and lawns, officials say.

The Rancocas has received a lot of attention since the state launched the new strategy in late 1997. But other river tributaries--including the Cooper River, Pennsauken Creek, Newton Creek, Big Timber Creek and Raccoon Creek--are equally important.

A major component of the Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) strategy is to first reconnect people to creeks, places that often lacked public access and were even once thought of as polluted places to avoid.

"We're trying to get people involved, to get real grassroots efforts behind this, because a lot of this is going to involve behavior change," said Barbara Hirst, of the DEP's Division of Watershed Management.

Traditional controls on municipal and industrial wastewater discharges into the creeks have accomplished about as much as they can, Hirst said. Yet most of the creeks feeding into the Delaware remain classified as moderately impaired.

The main culprits: silt from erosion and pollution carried by stormwater, such as agricultural and residential pesticides and fertilizers, automotive fluids and sediments. These pollutants make it difficult for organisms, tiny shrimp-like crustaceans and insect larvae at the base of the aquatic food chain, to survive.

This is especially true in the summer, when nutrients from fertilizers foster algal blooms that choke out other life. Dying algae consume dissolved oxygen in the waterways needed by all forms of aquatic life.

Meanwhile, silt chokes out the gravelly bottoms of creeks where many of these organisms live. Silt is exacerbated by the clearing of land for development and inadequate stormwater controls around existing developments.

Collection systems funnel storm water from roads and parking lots into small drainage pipes, forcing large volumes of water into tiny streams that erode quickly and carry silt into larger creeks and eventually into the river. In a more natural setting, this water would trickle into the creeks more slowly.

Originating in the Pinelands and flowing past farmlands, suburban developments and densely populated urban areas, Rancocas Creek is the largest tributary of the Delaware in the tri-county region. It drains some 370 square miles encompassing all or parts of 30 municipalities in Burlington, Camden and Ocean counties.

In parts of the Pinelands where there is no development, water quality in the creek is considered pristine. But quality becomes most impaired around suburban housing developments and farms that use lots of pesticides and fertilizers.

State and federal officials are currently considering requirements to help control pollutants from new developments, things like special ponds that allow pollutants in water discharged from storm drains to settle. But Hirst said such strategies may ultimately have to be applied to existing developments if water quality is to improve.
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