June 14th Raritan river meeting recap:

[AndyS]

I recently attended the Fourth Annual Raritan River Conference at Dukes estate. All I can say is WOW. I can’t believe the amount of people working on the river, in ALL aspects. Everything from oyster monitoring in Raritan Bay to dam removal. There must have been at least 200 people there, everyone from NOAA to DEP. Awards, workshops, power point presentations, anything you could possibly think of. I didn’t talk to too many people just a few, as there was just so much going on it was hard to get a word in edgewise. Those I spoke to were the guys doing the P.I.T. tagging on the river and another woman who is raising shad eggs in the classroom for her students. I felt a little out of place, me sitting there in the corner with my ball cap on surrounded by college students, scientists and professors. I felt like saying “I’ll get that shad for ya, but it aint going to be easy, it’s a smart fish” I felt like Quint in Jaws in the town meeting, the ONLY fisherman there !!!

It was a great time, I learned so much. But when they talk about a river in New Jersey it is very far reaching. The Passaic river was bought up a number of times as wall as Lawrence Brook. The meeting lasted from 8am till 4pm, please see the attached agenda.

A lot of heavy hitters were there.

Lard and I thinking about doing our own power point presentation on the next go around.

It was nice to see NO ONE from Fish and Game there, only NJDEP …….WTF !!!

Nice to see Bob Speigel of Edison Wetlands Association there !! (my hero)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtwZW94rmKE


http://www.raritan.rutgers.edu/events/index.php

BTW, Roberts St. dam will gone by July 14th if all goes well.
Speaking dams, there are 1755 dams in NJ, so far we have been able to take down ...........7 !!! And, they want to put river herring on the endangered species list, but we can't get rid of the dams.....go figure

[surfrod]

Dams are damn political hot potatoes. In some places the local pols have houses on the "lake" by the dam and block all attempts at removing them.

not to mention the cost involved.

[kcritch]

Thanks for the info Andy. Good News on the Roberts St Dam. Where do you find the information about these meetings and the plans for the river?

[AndyS]

They just joined with Rutgers so the site has been up and down.

http://blueraritan.org/