Bob DeVita, longtime manager of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s River Restoration Department, passed away last week. I never met Bob in person, but I interviewed him several times for This American River. We talked mostly about Bob’s work managing the PVSC’s two skimmer boats, which remove tons of floating garbage from the river’s surface […]
Brick City, a five-part documentary about Newark Mayor Corey Booker’s fight efforts to fight crime, premiers Monday, September 21 on The Sundance Channel. Filmmaker Marc Levin hails from Maplewood, N.J. Brick City‘s executive producer is Oscar-winning actor/director Forrest Whitaker, who was intrigued by Booker because “he empowers people, and he’s done that on so many […]
A recent story in the online publication Yale Environment 360 reports on the impact of a planned series of dams along Southeast Asia’s Mekong River. A remarkable two-thirds of the world’s rivers have already been dammed. The 2,800-mile-long Mekong was one of the world’s last free-run rivers; that is, until China completed the Xiaowan dam […]
Eels and crabs too, and scientists are assessing the health of their populations in the Lower Passaic River. Researchers are snagging specimens with nets, processing them at a makeshift lab in East Rutherford then sending tissue samples on to a Massachusetts lab for analysis. The goal to determine how Passaic River wildlife is handling Passaic […]
A big shout out to the Passaic River communities of Summit, New Providence and Berkeley Heights. They are the first three New Jersey municipalities to ban the use of phosphorous lawn fertilizers and restrict when and how residents can use other lawn fertilizing products. (Excess phosphorous stimulates the growth of algae and other aquatic plants […]
On Sunday, The New York Times ran an investigative report about rampant violations of the nation’s Clean Water. More distressing than the violations though was the lax enforcement by state and federal environmental agencies. According to The Times, records submitted by polluters themselves show that “the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 […]