Water, Water Everywhere and Yet

I missed Blog Action Day this year (it was last week) when bloggers were asked to post about this year's topic of concern: water. But I did see a good number of posts and here are some links culled from them.

Water as a Human Right: In July, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over objection from the United States. Today, nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water. More Info »

Women: In Africa, women are predominantly responsible for collecting water. They walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 40 pounds to gather water for their community, which is usually still not safe to drink. More Info »

Polluted Oceans: Not only is pollution bad for the environment, it’s also expensive! Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year. More Info »



Uninhabitable Rivers: Today, 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. That’s not surprising considering the fact that 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually. More Info »

Food Footprint: Do you know the water footprint of your food? For example, 75 liters of water are required to make a glass of beer and 15,500 liters to make a kilogram of beef. More Info »

Water Wars: Many scholar, researchers and political analysts attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. In fact, a report commissioned by the UN Development Program found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa. More Info »

Technology Footprint: On an average day, 500 billion liters of water travel through US power plants to power all the technology that we use every day. For example, that shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million liters to charge those alone. More Info »

Bottled Water: Even though people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled. More Info »

Farmers vs. Animals: As water becomes scarcer in Africa, farmers not only compete with each other but also with other animals, including elephants. Forced into close contact with farmers, elephants destroy crops and wreak havoc on agriculture, causing farmers in turn to resort to violence in order to protect their crops and water sources. More Info »

Children: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. More Info »

Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now took 400 gallons of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 1800 gallons. Not wearing cotton? The dyes and synthetic fibers used to make your clothes create waste that’s among the many contributors to water pollution. More Info »

Water Celebrities: A number of celebrities have taken up the cause of water and water rights, including Matt Damon , Adrian Grenier , Leonardo DiCaprio , and Will & Jada Smith .

Riker Hill Park

Riker Hill is a 204.68-acre complex off Beaufort Avenue located in the western section of Essex County in Roseland and is composed of three parts: 1) The Riker Hill Art Park, a 42-acre former US Nike missile tracking base, acquired in 1977. Its former army barracks are now occupied by artists, sculptors and craftsmen; 2) Dinosaur Park, a fossil site of 16 acres (6.5 ha) at the border between Roseland and Livingston. It is one of the major sites in United States where a large number of dinosaur tracks are preserved. It was acquired in 1970 and 3) Becker Park, a 147-acre tract of undeveloped parkland that was purchased in 1969 in part through the Green Acres Program.

Riker Hill Art Park was a United States Army Nike Missile Base in the 1950's. The tract was purchased from the federal government for one [$1.00] dollar, in 1974. The buildings that once housed army facilities have been converted to art studios where sculpture, painting, photography, and various crafts now flourish.

Not only does Riker Hill Art Park provide a unique opportunity for local artists to work together in a communal setting, but it is the only self-supporting park in the park system. The art studios rented to the artists, along with art instruction, the gallery, and concerts held there, produce revenues for the County that help support the cost of the park's operation.

Originally, the site was part of a 55 acre Roseland Quarry owned by the Kidde Company. (There is still quarrying nearby.) In 1968, dinosaur tracks were discovered at the quarry. A 14-year-old named Paul E. Olsen who lived in Livingston started visiting the site with his friend Tony Lessa. They eventually uncovered more than one thousand dinosaur, animal and insect tracks from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic period over the course of several years.

Paul and Tony helped get the Riker Hill Fossil Site named a National Natural Landmark. The two teens thought that one way to prevent the site from being developed was to send a cast from a footprint of Eubrontes Giganteus to President Richard Nixon to get his support.

Cast of Eubrontes giganteus track by Paul Olsen (1970)
Photo taken at National Archives, Washington, D.C.(2009) via wikimedia.org/

Two happy endings to the story. First, the quarry was divided and the most productive portion was preserved and donated to Essex County Park Commission and named after Walter Kidde. It was declared a National Natural Landmark in June 1971. The rest of the quarry was later developed into the Nob Hill apartment complex.

The second happy ending is that young Paul Olsen grew up to become an actual paleontologist.

He studied and wrote about where he grew up too. The Newark Group, also known as the Newark Supergroup, is the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic sedimentary rocks which outcrop intermittently from Nova Scotia to North Carolina that is named for the city of Newark, New Jersey.

The red rock beds that he explored feature ripple marks, mud cracks, and even rain drop prints. Dinosaur footprints are common, though actual body fossils are very rare. The beds dip to the east, while the faults dip westward.

These beds of sedimentary rock are intruded by numerous dikes and sills made from igneous activity like lava and magma flows. The New Jersey Palisades sill is a huge example of that.

The Passaic Formation was previously known as the Brunswick Formation since it was first described in the vicinity of New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is now named for the city of Passaic, New Jersey, which is near where its type section was described by paleontologist and Professor Paul Olsen.

I took my son's Scout troop to Riker Hill more than a decade ago and explained that we were basically standing at the edge of glacial Lake Passaic where lava from deep within the Earth once flowed and where dinosaurs may have once stood to drink from the lake.

Following these USGS Directions, from Interstate 280 westbound, take Exit 4A and turn south on Eisenhower Parkway. Drive 1.1 miles and turn left onto Beaufort Avenue. After another 0.4 mile turn left onto the entrance road to Riker Hill Park. Drive up hill and park at the Geology Museum. Follow the trail from the museum parking past the ruins of a Nike missile platform, and down hill through the woods about .25 miles to an abandoned stone quarry.

You will see fresh exposures of sedimentary red beds of the Early Jurassic Towaco Formation. They consist of layered shale and intervening sandstone that preserves a variety of sedimentary structures like ripple marks, mud cracks and even trace fossils (rare dinosaur tracks which are very tiny).

It is illegal to remove anything, especially fossils, from the area.

About 200 feet further, there is a high wall of basalt, which is an igneous rock intrusion feature. Though the red rocks you see there are sedimentary rocks, this igneous rock was formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.

• Riker Hill Complex
• USGS description of site
• Map of site
• Hiking directions

On the Lenape Trail

Today is the Lenape34 trail hike. An organization called the FreeWalkers organized the "walk" of 34 miles on the Lenape Trail. It will go from 7 a.m. to about 7 p.m. The group hopes to call attention to the trail's revitalization effort.

I really wanted to participate, but it's a working day. I hoped to sneak away early and catch them along the trail but that wasn't possible. (read more about the hike and the trail)

The Lenape Trail has a 30 year history. Back in 1980, Al Kent, who had been a trail coordinator in Morris County but lived in West Orange, decided to try to establish the trail using existing paths.

The trail would use parkland, sidewalks along streets and some new pathways that were on lands used for power lines.

The name for the trail comes from the Native Americans who once lived and passed through part of Essex County and had actually had trails in the area some of which became roadways in colonial times. The Lenape's own trails ran through modern day Yanticaw, Branch Brook, South Mountain and other county parks.

The Lenape's own name for themselves (an autonym) is sometimes spelled Lennape or Lenapi, means "the people." They are also known as the Lenni Lenape (the "true people") or as the Delaware Indians. The latter is an English settler name for them. (The Delaware River was named after Lord De La Warr, the governor of the Jamestown settlement.) They used the same name above for almost all the natives living along the Delaware River and its tributaries.

I had connected with Kent and other volunteers back in the early 1980s when I was involved with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC). The group is an American nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that works with communities to preserve unused rail corridors by transforming them into rail trails within the United States of America.

The part of Essex County that I live in had just gotten some of that railbed property and was trying to decide how to use it best.

Unfortunately, because of a combination of community bureaucracy and homeowners along the proposed trails who feared the traffic, some of those sections are now forever lost as passive recreation space.

The mission of RTC is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors.

Today RTC is on a multi-year mission to map all rail trails with GPS devices. The 13,500 miles (21,700 km) of open and operating trails are the first priorities of this project with trails under construction or in the development phase coming next.

Recently, Nutley resident Steve Marano has been working to revitalize the trail. He has recruited volunteers who attended a trail maintenance workshop in late August. They walked along the path and have freshened the trail markers (blazes) that occur about every 50 to 100 feet. The trail blazes are on trees and on erected posts (bollards) on streets.

The amazing Al Kent, now 84, had been continuing to maintain the trail on his own all these years.

The volunteers hope to add hundreds of more durable and visible miniature aluminum signs to label the Lenape Trail. They have a $3,500 grant from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Essex County has offered to help by placing maps of the trail in kiosks in county parks and installing poles where the Lenape signs can be placed. It's a wise decision to do so as it showcases a part of New Jersey that is often seen more as urban sprawl than a trailwalking opportunity.

The Lenape Trail is a trail connecting Newark, New Jersey with Roseland, New Jersey. It was established in 1982.

It is the fifth longest trail in the state behind the Delaware and Raritan Canal Trail, the Appalachian Trail, the completed section of the Highlands Trail in the state and the Batona Trail.

The Lenape trail traverses cities like Newark and its suburbs, but also the Watchung Mountains and the Passaic Meadows.

The rocky, steep slopes of the Watchung Mountains and the flood-prone nature of the Passaic Meadows has kept those two areas less developed than the rest of this part of the state.

Trails often intersect and overlap and the Lenape Trail is no exception. The Lenape Trail is part of the larger 156-mile Liberty Water Gap Trail, created by Kent in 2000.

It incorporates the West Essex Trail which is the Lenape Trail's only true "rail-to-trail" section that survived from those efforts we made in the 30 years ago.

The Lenape Trail also connects with the 14 mile Morris County Patriots Path trail system which runs from Bernardsville to Morristown.

The trail is one of 7 Northern NJ pathways that make up the Liberty Water Gap Trail. When the LWGT is completed, it will cover 130 miles from the Hudson River to the Delaware River. Hopefully, events like the Lenape34 walk will motivate groups to fill in the gaps in the trail system in their own neighborhoods.

Nutley's Yanticaw Park is a new section of the trail. The route connects 19 parks which makes up the majority (70%)of the trail. The remaining sections pass through more suburban settings.

Though this makes the trail less of a "wilderness" hike, it also offers walkers many historical and cultural sites to visit. Those include Ferry Street in the Ironbound section of Newark, Penn Station (access to buses and trains also allows walkers to pick up and leave the trail if a 34 mile "through hike" is too much for them), Military Park, The New Jersey Historical Society, NJPAC, the Newark Museum, Sydenham House (Newark's oldest house) and the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Moving out of Newark, there is Kingsland Manor in Nutley, Kips Castle in Montclair, parts of the Morris Canal and the Riker Hill fossil site.

The Lenape Trail is scheduled to expand to the new Riverfront Park and branches off to alternative routes to Turtle Back Zoo and South Mountain Reservation.

Another group working to help the trail is the NY NJ Trail Conference. NYNJTC is a volunteer organization which works with parks to maintain the trails, and publish maps and guides to the metropolitan area's public footpaths.

MORE INFORMATION

www.lenapetrail.org

www.nynjtc.organd and their Lenape Trail information

www.railstotrails.org and their www.traillink.com

People and Bears in New Jersey

NJ DEP Division of Fish and Wildlife biologists, along with DEP Commissioner Bob Martin, are reminding the public to remove food sources from around their homes to prevent difficult encounters with bears this fall.

Black bears are starting to fatten up for winter denning and will more actively forage for food in the coming weeks.

The DEP has issued a press release advising residents living in areas frequented by bears to take the following precautions to minimize bear encounters:

* Never feed a black bear.

* Use certified bear-resistant garbage containers. They offer the best protection. Otherwise, store all garbage in containers with tight-fitting lids and place them within a secure location, where bears are unlikely to see or smell them.

* Put out garbage on collection day, not the night before.

* Wash garbage containers frequently with a disinfectant solution to remove odors. Draping rags soaked in bleach over your garbage containers also helps to eliminate odors.

* If you choose to feed birds, do so during daylight hours only, between December 1 and April 1, when bears are least active. Suspend the birdfeeder from a free-hanging wire, making sure it's at least 10 feet off the ground and away from the trunk of a tree. Bring the feeder indoors at night. Clean up spilled seeds and shells daily.

* Clean up after pets. If you must feed them outside, immediately pick up any leftover food and remove the food bowls after they have finished.

* Clean outdoor grills and utensils thoroughly after each use and store grills securely. Grease and food residue can attract bears.

* Do not place meat, dairy or any sweet foods in compost piles.

* Residents who have fruit or nut trees on their property should recognize that bears may
be attracted to any residual fruit or nuts left on the ground. Removing fallen fruit or nuts will minimize bear activity in your yard.

* Properly installed electric fencing is an effective and efficient way of protecting crops, beehives and livestock.

* Report bear damage, nuisance behavior or aggressive bears to the local police department and to the DEP's hotline at (877) WARN DEP.

For information on New Jersey's black bears,
visit http://www.njfishandwildlife.com/bearfacts.htm