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| By: Leon Tovey, Staff Writer | 05/20/2005 |
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Plan in the works to clean phosphorus from area lake.
JAMESBURG — Nearly 20 years after Manalapan Lake was closed to swimmers because of pollution, the New Jersey Water Supply Authority is looking at ways to clean up the 48-acre lake. The NJWSA last year hired Princeton Hydro, a Ringoes-based wetlands management and restoration company, to prepare a restoration plan for the lake. The focus of the plan will be to reduce levels of phosphorus entering the lake from its 17,254-acre watershed, said Kathy Hale, a senior watershed protection specialist for the NJWSA. "Our goal is to have the lake meet water quality standards set by the state," Ms. Hale said Monday. The lake is currently listed as "impaired" by the Department of Environmental Protection for both phosphorus and fecal coliform, Ms. Hale said. According to an overview of the project prepared by Princeton Hydro, phosphorus, an essential nutrient for plant growth, is not in and of itself harmful, but in high concentrations it can cause excessive algae blooms that lower water quality and harm fish. Fecal coliform is a family of bacteria common in soils, plants and animals often found in human and animal waste. Like phosphorus, it is not necessarily harmful in and of itself, but its presence in drinking or swimming water is seen as an indicator for other disease causing organisms, such as giardiasis and E. coli. Christine Krupka, a senior project scientist for Princeton Hydro, said Monday that the company's plan is to focus on reducing phosphorus levels in the lake in an effort to restore the ecosystem. In an effort to improve water quality, the lake was dredged at the recommendation of the state Department of Environmental Protection in 1997 and 1998. Approximately 138,000 cubic yards of sediment was removed from the lakebed, increasing the mean depth of the lake from 1.68 meters to 2.23 meters. Ms. Krupka said that while the dredging project did help improve water quality, it was not enough to meet state clean water guidelines. She said the company completed several sampling events of the lake and its tributary streams last fall and earlier this year and is planning to conduct another in the coming months. She said the company could present a draft restoration plan by the end of the summer. Ms. Hale said the end result of the cleanup plan was uncertain at this point and would depend in large part on the willingness of the municipalities in the watershed area — Jamesburg, Monroe, Manalapan, Millstone and Freehold — to follow the plan's recommendations. At the height of its popularity as a swimming spot in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the lake drew between 20,000 and 25,000 swimmers per weekend, according to Borough Historian Tom Bodall. Ms. Hale said she was hesitant to say whether the plan, if implemented by the five municipalities, would return the lake to a state where swimming would be possible. "It might be feasible from a technical standpoint to restore the lake to a pristine condition, but whether it is feasible from an economic and practical standpoint is hard to say," she said. Ms. Hale said the plan — which is part of a larger, similar project aimed a cleaning up the Raritan Basin watershed undertaken by the NJWSA in 2002 — might recommend that the five municipalities pass ordinances and implement education programs aimed at reducing fertilizer use, for example. Runoff from over-fertilized lawns is a major source of phosphorus pollution in many of the state's waterbodies, she said. Ms. Hale also said some of the recommendations made to curb phosphorus pollution also could cut levels of fecal coliform in the watershed.
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