welcome my name is matt tasha sherman and i am your host and my guests today are from the stony brook millstone watershed association so first i'd like to introduce jim wells men he is the executive director of the association welcome jim and gwen mcnamara who is the communications manager welcome thanks thanks problems and you're quite welcome and one of the main reasons i wanted to have you on other than i think that you have something valuable to say is i have no clue what  let's start with facts that's russia that's probably the number one question that we get asked watershed is our middle name what the heck is a watershed it's actually a very simple basic unit of geography it's the area of land that drains into a water body so our concern is the two hundred sixty five square mile region that drains into the millstone river and its main tributary the stony brook we cover an area of twenty six towns in mercer monmouth middlesex hundred and and somerset counties in our watershed literally if if it's raining and water runs over the ground eventually it will end up in the most of the river that's the area that we're concerned about great so and that's really clear thank you had a lot of  the thing is there it is and why should we be concerned and maybe you can tell me like you know the inception because your see your organization is sixty years old right so what is the mission right and then why do we need to be concerned about that as well the stony brook mill stone watershed association is basically century jerseys environmental groups we were founded sixty years ago to protect clean water and a healthy environment in our region so i tell people if you drink water or you take showers you ought to know about what we what we do and we want you to be part of our effort what a lot of people don't understand is that your water comes from the stream that may be running through your neighborhood or it may be coming through the aquifer that's under your backyard so what we do on the land how we manage our landscapes are yards corporate campuses in the region school grounds all of that land how we manage it directly influences what's in the water and could be influencing what we drink and the water we use in our cellars and i have a million questions and so princeton it's you know the people who live in princeton trying attention because our in the religious right absolutely so that you know we sort of grow up thinking that well somebody is handling the lottery you know right now and why do we need an organization and why should i get involved and i just assume i'm being taken care of well here's here's the reality every single one of us causes water pollution and every single one of us can do something about it so yes we have private and public entities whose responsibility is for when we turn that tap to have clean water but the problem is we're all fighting against their best efforts so when we dump stuff down the toilet or when we wash our car and it runs into the the storm drain that ends up in a stream that water is going to be pulled directly out cleaned up and then sent back to us in our tap so we all need to worry about what we're doing and we all should understand what our watershed is because that's the area from which we get the water that we're going to going to ask you you know it's really in my thinking but i have old expired vitamins old expired pharmaceuticals prescriptions and you don't want to put them in the ground and you don't want to and you know i'm diabetic it used to be syringes floating up on shore and what do we do with all of this i typically think well you know if i put the pills in the in the toilet bowl you know it's just a lot of water it's going to think i'm guilty for having one or more than one occasion dumped the stuff down the drain but that's actually the last thing you want to do the best thing to do if you have expired medicinals is to wrap them up in plastic and put them in the garbage can have stuff that you think may have some particular concern then you know call the township or call the county's waste handling people and they might give you guidance but the problem is when we dump that stuff in the drain those pharmaceuticals are generally not cleaned up out of our waste water plants or drinking water plants so if you  love drinking other people's medicines then this isn't a problem so as as more people have started to monitor for the presence of pharmaceuticals in our streams in our drinking waters we're it in the toilet down and saying ok i want to talk about this public question but before we do that i just you know for me when i have a guest on the show i really want to educate people yeah and i want people  able to integrate something without being overwhelmed so like five of the main things you would tell people not to do like one don't dump your pharmaceuticals down that well you know there's there being an environmentalist i like to say everybody carries around their own particular and appropriate shade of green and have got a green shirt on today not everybody can be as green as i can be but everybody can be a little greener than they happen you've got a beautiful gre fun today so there are a lot of things that are easy to do there are some things that are harder to do but watch what you're dumping down the drains and watch how much water you're consuming we can all reduce the amount of water that we're wasting because think about it if you live in princeton and you're sitting there brushing your teeth and the water is going down the drain because you've left it on that water goes down the drain it goes out through a series of decaying pipes to the treatment plant out on the millstone river it gets cleaned cleaned up put back in the river travels down the river gets pulled out at a drinking water plant down near gets cleaned up and then pump to back to you for your shower for your tap we are wasting an enormous amount of energy by pumping and treating and keating water so every time you want or is being recycled but the goes right so every time you're wasting water you're wasting energy and if you're concerned about global warming which we all should be we want to reduce the amount of energy we use and we can't afford to waste water anymore either we're having prolonged periods of showerhead will the one that's going to use water wisely we can also we have a program called river friendly our river friendly program enables residences businesses schools or golf courses to learn what they're really see you know am i wasting my water what am i doing in my home or in my yard that's going to make it and you know she jumped over something really quickly i want to give a little extra advice and forth because a lot of people have heard of this thing called energy star mentioned cold water sense and so if you're buying a plumbing fixture and you want to save water look for the water since liebl e p a puts these things out and so i you know people it's great to collapse i sometimes because i'm fanatic about plumbing fixtures and i will tell you that the watershed earlier this year bought what's called a dual flush toilet cost no more than a regular toilet but it lets you flush ha flush for liquid waste and a full flush for solid waste so that's a that's a very simple basic have to when you're not lying you don't have to give up their style of mind that i think that one of the things that for me first of all you know it's like you said  global warming issues and people should be concerned and yet i have met people who deny its existence and take it some you know propaganda you know for self serving politicians or whatever  so there's the what's in it for me at ranked right so what is it like for companies i would imagine that what's in it for them is they could reduce their costs absolutely i mean i'll tell y there's a couple nice examples one of which is the johnson and johnson company big important company in say new jersey famous or infamous for having the most spectacular green large lawns in association with their with their headquarters in different buildings where we worked with their skilled and campus right up on highway sixty one up in montgomery township as part of our river friendly program and now at the back side where you don't see anyway is what i consider the most beautiful johnson and johnson lawn in their whole global complex because it's got weeds in it because it's got dead spots in it they are using next to no chemicals i don't think they're using any chemicals anymore they're using a lot less water on the lawn it's saving them money they're educating their workers about why they've done it so they're helping the environment saving natural habitat for the birds or are in fact right so i suspect people in third world countries look at the way we use space with absolute shock at times you know this whole long thing that nobody does anything with others and waste water and yeah yeah so the thing that we talked about before the show that i think is pretty significant is your working to educate the public in general but also children to actually it's very easy to disconnect and disassociate ourselves from the problem and also to assume that somebody else is taking care of the problem and so what programs do you offer that companies can take advantage of individuals schools well today we have basically a four main programs with the water so the soci asian through which we're pursuing this clean water and our mental mission  the first is conservation and that's all about how we manage and steward land we manage a spectacular eight hundred sixty acre nature reserve hopewell which hosts the largest community supported organic farm in the country wow but that program that constellation conservation program also works with homeowners businesses schools golf courses anybody that's willing to us work with us we want to work with you and find ways that you can lighten your impact on on the ground so that's the river friendly program and information about that is available on our web site and we have an advocacy program that works directly with towns and the state government to try to improve the laws that protect our environment particularly focused on water and we need an educated public to be there with us we're working very hard in princeton right now to try to protect more habitat in an area called the princeton ridge very environmentally sensitive very important area that's under great development pressures so what i want from the people in princeton we want the people in princeton to come to public meetings and let their elected township committee people know they should be protecting more land and and and developing less of it we have a science program that works to monitor for water pollution throughout our region and we work with almost a hundred volunteers some of which go out twice a month to gather information on the chemical and the biological in the physical health of the stream so we're kind of out there with our hundred strong canary flocks trying to look for pollution and we need volunteers to help us with that and then we have this education program that you are referencing every year we serve about ten thousand kids and adults through nearly four hundred formal programs and and that's to me maybe our longest return investment we're working with kids today but let's realize that these been disconnected from the environment this is a tragedy i don't know about you but growing up i spent most of the time in the summer outdoors playing in unstructured ways running around the woods and that is our natural habitat that is how we evolved and you think about it we have five senses and when you're outside you are smelling the flowers hearing the birds seeing the clouds feeling the wind and tasting that dandy line that your friend is just right so you've got the five senses that are evolving in sync with with one another now take a kid from inside put them on the couch bombard them with artificial sound and light in two dimensions now is it any wonder that we've got attention deficit this or childhood anxiety disorder all of these problems that kids are facing today and as any any question why people are disconnected from the environment they don't understand where their water comes from down under stand how the environments support our daily life so our goal is to reconnect kids and their parents and families and other adults wi because we think it's a really critical thing and maybe the number one issue facing is that we're not really paying enough writing to them and you know when you talk about kids sitting indoors and the whole a g d thing and you know it's a lot of stuff out there about all of that including what people are eating and whatever but when you describe them sitting there they're in gauge very minimally as you talk about so it's almost as if some of those senses start to die and and game and stuff as much as anyone and but what my wife and i try to do is also yeah sure they're exactly right and they get it because there's no denying the society around you yeah and if you're and if you're if you don't know where to start yeah  treasures where people might not realize of these wonderful natural spots and they bring families bring kids and educate and show them you know you don't have to be afraid to get a little dirty and it's just another way that we're out there trying to show people about the founder of the natural world so if you're looking for information or or how you can you know get more connected come on over to the watershed reserve we're right outside of pennington we've got a wonderful nature center the buttons or nature center that has animals and exhibits and a dedicated staff that can lead you want to hike or bring you out of a hazing and you don't have to plan it in advance and with you or others that you can do it either way you do have scheduled program some of them coming up for our sixtieth anniversary we have a whole sixty events for sixty years wow that some really incredible ones coming up on this saturday october seventeenth to come out for the fall foliage open house you can come out on october twenty second for a program with a local artist susan hockaday she's going to be doing an evening program about transforming art and nature into art pretty cool and then we have a walk happening on october thirty first over at the  dr henry horne from the university grail there's a right of way in some cases if you're ever looking for information just go to the watershed or it'll tell you whether or not you have to register in advance ever the you're just looking for something to do yeah he does or like you like me you can just pop on run by a couple that leases about sixty acres from us so it's part of our reserves and the practice is called a community supported farm so at the beginning of the year people pay up front for a share of the farm and the small share like three hundred bucks and a big share is like five hundred fifty something and then basically what you're doing is you're getting great vegetables and you're also supporting the farmer through the course of the year so if and when you go and pick your own veggies some of them you go and pick that up great pick your own strawberries and the beautiful flowers that you can and some of them they they prepare and you get you know absolutely the source of the you see what the what it is that you're eating and where it comes from grain why water before we run out of time i want to talk about what you want people to vote for and what it what it is that's happening right so this is a critical opportunity for all voters in new jersey to protect our future there is on the ballot a question to provide for four hundred million dollars in bonding to extend some critical programs the green acres program which preserves open space the farm land preservation program which does as you might imagine preserve these are already programs that have been  jersey we are incredibly densely populated and developed but we are one of the leaders in the country in preserving land other states are looking at us and and following wow many cases but the land  bank or the or the trust fund that we have to preserve land is just about completely out of money so this measure must pass on november third or will be dead in the water in terms of credit i mean that they can come in and take away whatever has been preserved already well no but it would mean that there wouldn't be any more preserved land so what's great about this program is it's really fostered a cooperative approach between local governments county governments non profits like the watershed association and others and the state government a lot of groups will raise local money or private money to match the in not only preservation but in business in environmental industries and jobs so that it's not like you're asking voters to hand over tax dollars i get nothing that i that's right and think about you know just to focus on our part of this the water that it's it's the preservation of open lands that is one of the most important things we can do to preserve our water it's every time we layer blacktop you know parking lots and buildings and highways and all of these things on top of the land that's a source of pollution into our waterways it's a it's a impediment to re charging refurbishing the water in our pocket for years so this is just a critical critical vote so that's where we are that cover up the more damage we do to our water absolutely yeah for one thing the natural hydrological cycle of water that comes out of the air rain and snow some of it percolates down into the soil and then helps rejuvenate the aquifer and so if you're on wells that's where your water comes from other water prickles over the surface of the land but if you start you know the more of the pavement you put on that means less water can get down to the aquifer and more water runs off really fast off surfaces into streams that then can't handle it so what we end up having is when it rains we've got these terentia floods because all that water's got to go somewhere used to go down into the aquifer now it's got it rushes off the blacktop  the streams often collecting oil and grease and other stuff that's coming out of our cars and so forth so we have to protect more land if we're going to protect our water how scared should we be to what we're doing right now that's a good question association later this fall is going to be coming out with the state of the watershed report and this is a first ever on our part comprehensive look at the health and you know conditions at hand where are we  how what is our land use like how does our water quality what environmental protection policies do we really haven't place you know to to really affect our our environment and so this is something that we're in the midst of analyzing right now i think that people are go heartened in some cases maybe a little scared in some others but i think it's going to be a really important awareness building tools that it will have information big big on information so stay tuned for later this fall on it's going to be coming out will make it available on our website for everyone but hopefully you'll see some reports in the news and things like that to inform inform the public but more take has been thinking about that long and hard and are up and have some good results in that yeah i think the biggest thing for me is  s is being aware of what it is that i'm doing that impacts the environment not to in an insignificant way and yet to make some small adjustments that could then make a significant impact right there and that's why organizations like ours exist our job is to help you and help everyone that lives in our region be better environmental whether it's the products that you buy of the store the practices that your business is undertaking that could be adjusted there's little things and big things that every day we can do differently that add up to a cleaner environment if we take it seriously i think and we're down to our last minute so i just wanted to say that one of the things i really would do is invite businesses because you're not asking them for money you're asking to educate them and partner with them in doing better for themselves and for everyone else and that's one easy place to start because mostly you know how much is it going to cost me right well let's take a look at what shift you can make so i just want to applaud you for the work that you're doing and now that i know what i want to shit is there you can just started saving differently in some way fifteen seconds anything well i'll say this you know the work we do and have been doing for sixty years is all because we have people that support us we're a nonprofit organization so if you liked what you heard today please consider joining us and you can check out our website the watershed that org and find out a little bit more and we hope if you like which heard like which is c that you'll join us as a member and make us even stronger excellent thank you so much thanks for having us on my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us