Publication

Yergeau, S.*¹, , Mangiafico, Salvatore², , Rowe, Amy³,
¹ Environmental & Resource Management Agent, Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Toms River, NJ, 08755
² County Agent II (Associate Professor), Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Millville, NJ, 08332
³ County Agent II (Associate Professor), Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Roseland, NJ, 07068

https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1307/

Many of New Jersey’s water quality issues stem from stormwater runoff, such as the inability to use waters for recreation due to pathogens, the loss of fisheries from lakes and coasts from nutrient pollution, increased flooding, and increased sedimentation from excess erosion within streams.  To address these problems, the New Jersey Governor, and the State Senate and Assembly passed the ‘Clean Stormwater and Flood Reduction Act’ in 2019 authorizing municipalities, counties, or groups of municipalities to establish and operate local fee-based stormwater utilities.  Stormwater utilities have been used in other parts of the country but have not been utilized in New Jersey.  The passing of the bill generated news, information, and opinion pieces on this topic as property owners in New Jersey prepared for what this legislation would entail.  In response to this new legislation, the authors compiled frequently asked questions garnered from the recent flurry of news articles and public meetings and answered them based upon the current best available research and legislation.  In addition to useful information on the stormwater utilities act, several questions were included as a primer on stormwater.  The goals of the fact sheet are to educate the public and others potentially impacted by this bill on the basics of the law and stormwater management in New Jersey and to clear up any misconceptions on the legislation.

 

The authors all conduct programs that involve stormwater management and have worked to incorporate this fact sheet into their educational programming.  Since publication in July 2019, this informative fact sheet has been viewed 353 times from the NJAES publications site.  In addition to being available online, this publication was given to members of the Stormwater Committee of the Barnegat Bay Partnership to aid in their efforts, was incorporated into a March 2020 Green Knight newsletter article (https://salem.njaes.rutgers.edu/greenknight/) with a circulation of over 800 throughout New Jersey, and has been distributed at six (6) events through Rutgers Master Gardener and Environmental Stewards volunteers. The fact sheet (FS1307) is published by the Rutgers New Jersey Agriculture Experiment Station and is available for download at: https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1307/.