Water Watch Cleans Up North Arlington

On Saturday, Sept. 23, 16 students and four locals with the New Jersey Community Water Watch cleared half a ton of used pipes, motor oil cans, and other garbage from Riverside Park in North Arlington, and even found time to donate food.

Ninya Loeppky, an Americorps volunteer in her fifth year with the NJCWW, said that for many of her student charges - themselves new to the organization - "it was the first time they actually got down and dirty doing something."

Though founded in 1994, the NJCWW can trace its roots back to the 1960s, before the Clean Water Act, when students realized how much waste businesses were putting into the state waterways and decided to take action against it, typically by conducting stream monitors.

Now the NJCWW is a joint program between AmeriCorps and the New Jersey Public Information Research Group Law and Policy Center, and is operating on 10 campuses statewide. It sponsors various programs, of which four are key: River Cleanup, Stream Monitoring, Environmental Education, and the Hurricane Katrina Relief programs.

The River Cleanup program is just that - initiatives taken on by the chapters to cleanup local riverbanks. These individual efforts are geared toward Make a Difference Day on Oct. 25, in which thousands of volunteers participate nationwide in waste removal and awareness-raising events.

In order to properly conduct stream monitors, NJCWW members are trained by the Department of Environmental Protection, and the results of its surveys are recorded in a state database to keep track of trends, such as how much small wildlife - or lack thereof - is present. This part of the NJCWW typically attracts science students.

Participants in the Environmental Education campaign consist of would-be teachers who take part in weekly workshops and seminars where they acquire skills in leadership and media relations. They then go on to educate kids, college students, and community members about water quality and what they can do to advocate for clean water in their towns and cities.

The Hurricane Katrina program is a relatively recent program and is described by Loeppky as having "impressed [her] a lot." They have recently raised a bit of money and intend to go down to Louisiana in the future, where they may sponsor a family or forge relations with a local organization. For now they are looking to coordinate their movements with other Newark-based organizations that are involved with Katrina.

When asked about any problems the NJCWW comes across, Loeppky said that "it's interesting to note how in Jersey these [environmental] issues are marginalized. It seems that a lot of political authorities have difficulty signing on to environmental campaigns, which is sad. The state has a long way to go."

Her comment was made against the backdrop of an Aug. 6 Star Ledger article implicating the Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Company's - one-time manufactures of compounds like DDT and Agent Orange - in the dumping of dioxin-rich waste into the Passaic River. Though initially ordered by the federal government back in 1994 to cleanup the river, the company's intense lobbying campaigns - and attempts to "scientifically" prove that dioxin is not a serious toxin - resulted in a sudden change of heart from the government, and now taxpayers as well as other companies find themselves funding a 10-year study of dioxin preceding its actual removal from the river. And in the meantime, the toxin further pollutes the Passaic.

But for the future, the NJCWW Newark and Montclair branches have scheduled a student-led cleanup of Riverside Park as it is very dirty. For them, it will be practice for a major clean up event on Oct. 28, and will also feature education booths, live music, and an attendance of at least 100 people.