Current Projects
Stormwater Implementation Grant Program 2008 Public Participation & Education Minigrants Research & Implementation Grant Program
_____________________________________________ Stormwater Implementation Grant Program In an effort to assist with on-the-ground local projects and working with communities to address stormwater management, the Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program (BBNEP) initiated a new grant program for stormwater implementation activities focusing on New Jersey's NJPDES Stormwater/UIC rules (N.J.A.C. 7:14A-25.4 and 25.8(b)). In May 2007, ten project proposals were approved for funding. Projects approved for funding were those that clearly sought to improve water quality in the Barnegat Bay watershed by implementing the Phase II Municipal Stormwater Rules, and were proactive in their efforts to improve stormwater management in their town or borough. Grants were awarded to the following municipalities and projects:
Work on these projects began in June 2007 and will be completed by May 2008. Each award recipient is required to match the amount given by the BBNEP by a minimum of 33%. The BBNEP’s 2008 Public Participation & Education Minigrant Program Recipients * Alliance for a Living Ocean (ALO) of Beach Haven has developed the “Shellfish, Fish, and a Healthy Bay” project which will provide a set of “hands-on” educational experiences to visitors and residents of Long Beach Island throughout the summer months of July and August and will include both weekly programs and special lectures. ALO’s programs will educate children and adults regarding the importance of a healthy bay and how to prevent non-point source pollution. Find out more at www.livingocean.org or call (609) 492-0222 and ask about their summer programs. * The Ocean County Soil Conservation District, located in Forked River, has designed and build well over a dozen rain gardens throughout the Barnegat Bay watershed by partnering with local groups such as public schools. Building on that success, through their 2008 Minigrant, they are providing picnic tables, signage, bird houses and feeders to complete the transformation of the five newest Rain Garden sites into practical and usable Outdoor Classrooms. To learn more about Rain Gardens, visit the Rain Garden page on our website, as well as the Fact Sheets page where you'll find helpful information to get your Rain Garden started. * The Potter Creek Crusaders, a small group of dedicated 6th graders at the Berkeley Township Elementary School in Bayville are enhancing their environmental studies by exploring the Potter Creek sub-watershed and its relationship to the Barnegat Bay estuary. The students plan to share their experiences in the Potter Creek sub-watershed with their fellow schoolmates and the public through a variety of exhibits and multimedia presentations. * The Parkday Organization, based in Toms River is creating an internet-based multi-dimensional map of the Barnegat Bay watershed for the BBNEP’s website (www.bbnep.org). This interactive map will provide information on recreational and environmental facilities, outdoor activities, demonstration projects, and natural resources throughout the watershed. Parkday also maintains a fabulous website of their own with wealth of information about local and state-wide parks. Check it out at www.parkday.org. * The Point Pleasant Borough Environmental Commission is enhancing its annual Earth Day environmental poster contest for local children, by working with partners to develop and provide an educational program for 500 students in Point Pleasant Borough schools. This program gives students practical information on how they can help protect and restore their local environment and emphasizes the importance of protecting the Barnegat Bay estuary's ecosystem. The winning poster has already been made into a t-shirt and sold at the Point Pleasant Borough Earth Day Celebration on April 20, 2008, but the educational program in the school will continue through the funding provided by this minigrant. The winning poster was created by local 4th-grader, Shea Blake. * Representatives from the American Littoral Society are taking to the airwaves on WOBM to introduce the public to the natural ecology of the Barnegat Bay. This radio campaign is making the connection between human behavior and the health of the Bay, inform people on how to be better stewards of their water resources, and promote participation in activities to improve the health of the Barnegat Bay. Through this minigrant project, the American Littoral Society will reach thousands of residents and visitors in the Barnegat Bay watershed with these important messages. To listen to the public service announcements created through this minigrant project, visit www.protectbarnegatbay.com and for more information about the American Littoral Society, visit their website. * A new magazine-style book, the Long Beach Island Blue Pages, is being developed by the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts & Sciences of Loveladies to inform summer visitors and residents on a wide variety of topics, from the history of the Barnegat Bay to environmental issues and responsible landscaping and boating. The goal of the Blue Pages is to foster a sense of responsibility and encourage cooperation in conservation. Learn more about the Long Beach Island Foundation for the Arts & Science and their summer programs at www.lbifoundation.org. * A new “Master Naturalist” program similar to the volunteer Master Gardeners program is being developed by the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey to create a corps of trained volunteer-interpreters for New Jersey's coastal ecosystems. Those completing the course will be required to provide 40 hours of community service each year to remain certified. Through this minigrant award, the recipients are training volunteers in Barnegat Bay estuarine ecology through a full-day course at the Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center in May 2008. * The South Toms River Municipal Alliance is creating a Rain Garden in an area of the Borough of South Toms River which drains to the Jakes Branch of the Toms River. This Rain Garden will provide an example for residents of how these projects can reduce erosion and protect the waterways from stormwater run-off pollution. The BBNEP Research and Implementation Grant Program The BBNEP provides annual funding to help underwrite the cost of projects which address priority issues and actions established by the Program and its partners. Typically, these projects call into two categories: research and monitoring, and implementation. Current research and monitoring projects * Dr. Michael Kennish and Scott Haag of Rutgers University will be conducting research in the bay during summer 2008 with the objective of developing a robust indicator of nutrient over-enrichment for the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary. The objective of this work is to apply a robust indicator of nutrient over-enrichment for the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary that will yield rapid detection of early eutrophication during the plant growing season. This indicator will thus have great utility for future monitoring of estuarine condition in the system at a significant reduction of time and cost relative to traditional seagrass surveys. Since it is too labor-intensive and costly to conduct estuary-wide seagrass surveys on an annual basis, the tracking of eutrophic condition in the estuary must be based on statistically sound sampling linked to an innovative approach. More specifically, they will collect data on the ratio of leaf nitrogen concentration to leaf mass of eelgrass (Zostera marina) samples from disjunctive seagrass beds along the estuary gradient. Quantitative measures will then be calculated to generate a matrix of values from which the eutrophic condition of the estuary can be determined during the plant growing season. Leaf nitrogen content has been shown to provide an accurate integrated measure of environmental nitrogen experienced by eelgrass in other estuarine systems as noted above. This work will apply this measure to the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary to determine eutrophic condition. This data will be used in Outreach and Education, specifically with the JCNERR and Tuckerton Seaport with their new monthly “Lunch-N-Learn” public seminar series. They also plan to hire a teacher to work “in the field” with researches and then have the teacher develop a fourth grade curriculum devoted to shallow bays and the impacts of Eutrophication on Estuarine Systems. This project is expected to be complete by fall 2009. *ReClam the Bay, LLC, a not for profit organization that developed out of the Shellfish Restoration Project work of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Ocean County, will develop and implement a state approved training certification for Shellfish Gardeners. The goal of this project is to develop a state approved training and certification program for shellfish gardeners. There are two primary objectives: by December of 2008 twenty-five ReClam the Bay volunteers will have been trained and certified to raise shellfish using State of New Jersey approved gardening techniques, and by December of 2008 twenty-five ReClam the Bay volunteers will have helped to educate more than 5,000 people concerning water quality issues in the Barnegat Bay Watershed. * Building on his research on Barnegat Bay's blue crabs, Rider University biologists Paul Jivoff, Ph.D., and his research team will research current population structure, reproductive potential and fishing effort for the blue crabs in the Barnegat Bay. Blue crabs are one of the most important commercial and recreationally fished species in New Jersey. Importance of the population of this crab being abundant has increased almost 10-fold over the last three decades. Also, during this time the blue crab population has declined drastically. There is a poor understanding of the current status of our crab population, which makes it critical to gather information. Rider University researchers will also assess the seasonal availability and habitat use patterns of blue crabs in Barnegat Bay. They also plan to examine the relative abundance and population structure of the adult blue crabs in the Barnegat Bay using field sampling traps out of Rutgers University Marine Field Station. This project is expected to be completed by spring 2009. * Researchers Ron Baker, Ph.D. and Christine Wieben of the U.S. Geological Survey New Jersey Water Science Center are working to determine the sources of nitrogen inputs to the highly eutrophic Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary. Since determining the relative importance of these nitrogen sources is difficult, but critical to effective management of nutrient loadings, such a determination is needed so that management actions may be properly prioritized and accurately justified. In order to determine the relative importance of different nitrogen sources, they are first going to identify the relevant information that is currently available, update nitrogen loading estimates, and formulate plans for a nitrogen-source assessment. This information will be critical in designing a cost-effective study to determine the sources of NPS nitrogen inputs. This project is expected to be completed by winter 2009. *In partnership with Monmouth University, Birdsall Engineering, Inc. is working on a Bacterial Source Tracking Project in Silver Bay. The goal of the project is to utilize GIS technology and Bacterial Source Tracking methodologies to determine specific sources of fecal pollution in the Silver Bay watershed (a sub-watershed of the Barnegat Bay watershed) and to identify applicable best management practices that can be employed to address the identified fecal sources. Current implementation projects * In order to create a “one-stop shopping” location for all information, data, and reports relevant to the Barnegat Bay estuary and its watershed, the BBNEP is working to create an Information Management System for the current BBNEP website. This project is being coordinated by the BBNEP in partnership with the United States Geological Survey. The new website additions will feature user-friendly graphics which will allow the user to find the information they are looking for by topic area either on the BBNEP site, or linked to one of our partners’ websites where Barnegat Bay-related data and reports are available. Similar projects have been completed by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary Program and the Chesapeake Bay Program (www.eyesonthebay.net). *The newly formed BBNEP Sustainable Communities Workgroup is working on developing mechanisms and incentives for builders, developers, planners, and municipal officials in the Barnegat Bay watershed to implement best management practices and low impact design strategies when designing and constructing residential and commercial buildings. The workgroup is using the “Builders for the Bay” program created by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Center for Watershed Protection, and the National Association of Home Builders as a model for how municipalities, developers, and environmental organizations can come together in an effort to minimize the damage to the Barnegat Bay from increased runoff and the fragmentation of wooded areas. * The Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program is a partnership between Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Ocean County, the BBNEP, the Ocean County Board of Chosen Freeholders, the NJDEP Bureau of Shellfisheries, and the Natural Resource Education Foundation of New Jersey. The goals of this program are to involve volunteers from the watershed in the revitalization of the clam and oyster populations in Barnegat Bay and educate the citizens of the watershed about the importance of shellfish to the bay and how they, as citizens, can work to improve the bay’s ecology through improved stewardship. Please visit www.reclamthebay.org for more information.
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The Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program (BBNEP) supports projects through competitive Requests For Proposals (RFPs), minigrants, and other funding mechanisms. The following list highlights examples of the projects currently being supported by the BBNEP.