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EPA Awards $400,000 to NJDEP for Coastal Water Monitoring Project in South Jersey

Release Date: 08/08/2001
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(#01092) New York, New York -- Beach goers and fishermen alike will benefit from a new $400,000 coastal water and shellfish monitoring project being funded primarily by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) . EPA has granted the money to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and will partner with New Jersey and local governments to use new and innovative technology to monitor the waters in coastal waters, including the back bays of Burlington, Cape May and Atlantic Counties. In addition, shellfish in about 80 different locations along the South Jersey coast will be tested for toxic contaminants such as cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, nickel, arsenic and aromatic hydrocarbons. The project is being funded through EPA's Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking (EMPACT) program, designed to bring people up-to-date environmental information they can understand and use in their day-to-day decision-making to protect their health and the environment. "The data gathered from this project will give the public immediate access to coastal water quality and will give information about the health of area shellfish," said William J. Muszynski, Acting Regional Administrator for EPA. "The information will be displayed on a website that will benefit educators, researchers, fishermen and the beach-going public." "New Jersey has a comprehensive coastal water monitoring program that serves as a national model for waterfront communities around this country and throughout the world," said New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Shinn. "Our program's primary focus is the ocean beaches where the majority of our residents and shore visitors swim. With this grant, we'll enhance our program by increasing our monitoring of the back-bay areas. We also have programs to monitor toxics in fish, and this grant will help us extend that program to include shellfish from specific areas." As part of the project, sophisticated water monitoring devices, called sondes, will be attached to buoys and deployed to measure, at set intervals, various parameters, such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, salinity, pH, turbidity and chlorophyll. The parameters are important indicators of the health of the waters. In particular, chlorophyll information will help predict and better understand algal blooms such as brown tide, which has recently occurred in southern New Jersey waters. All of the information from the sondes will then be transmitted using cell phone technology rather than traditional radio signals. Radio signals require transmission and amplification equipment. Cell phones can transmit without complicated equipment at a fraction of the cost. Data submitted by cell phone will be posted on an EMPACT Web page to be established next year on New Jersey's web site http://www.state.nj.us. As a result of this EMPACT project, the public will have near instant access to coastal water quality data. This will be useful for educators, researchers, baymen, fisherman and the beach going public. Since almost all of the schools in Atlantic and Cape May Counties have access to the Internet, educators can connect from their classrooms to retrieve water quality information about their bays. Though some bacterial monitoring of New Jersey beaches has been routinely done for 16 years, the monitoring will be enhanced and placed on DEP's NJBeaches.org Web site. This information will be linked to the EMPACT web page, which will provide the public with a complete picture of the coastal waters quality and allow them to make informed decisions. Work on the project is already underway. The sondes will be deployed later this fall. Shellfish testing will begin soon thereafter.