The drive to impose stricter water quality limits on what can go into
the Toms River got a major boost this week from a coalition of
environmental groups interested in keeping it one of the cleanest
streams in the state, and a major contributor to water quality in the
Barnegat Bay.
A
key provision of the new standard advocated by the groups is a 300-foot
buffer separating development from the river and its branches.
Local
officials should join this effort to convince the state Department of
Environmental Protection to impose those safeguards. That includes
officials in all the communities through which the branches of the
river run, from Jackson on the west to Berkeley on the south and, of
course, Toms River.
In many places, the protections already
exist. Parks and open spaces have been built to protect long stretches
on both sides of the river.
It is not too late to extend those protections.
The
point sources of pollution were choked off years ago, the pipes that
put poorly treated sewage into the river, or the chemical soup from the
Ciba-Geigy plant.
But people pollution, washed into the river each time it rains, remains a threat.
That threat can be eased, not eliminated, by the protections making the Toms River a Category 1 waterway would bring.
That
action will support similar protections for the Metedeconk River, the
creation of a no-discharge zone in Barnegat Bay, and a marine
conservation zone around the sedge islands at Island Beach.
It is
an important next step in the drive to protect the 660-square-mile
watershed, being led by the Barnegat Bay Natural Estuary Program.
State
regulators should act quickly on the petition by environmental groups
for more protections for the Toms River, an effort local officials
should be eager to join.
