NEW JERSEY WATERSHED AMBASSADORS PROGRAM
Watershed Management Area 1
Upper Delaware

Hello! My name is Adam Assenza and I am the 2007-2008 Watershed Ambassador for the Upper Delaware Watershed, Watershed Management Area 1 (WMA 1). Our watershed includes the western half of Sussex, northern tip of Hunterdon, northwestern edge of Morris, and all of Warren counties. I have lived in Stanhope my whole life, growing up beside the Musconetcong, canoeing on the Delaware, and visiting the Pequest and Paulins Kill. Now, I am home after graduating from Cook College, Rutgers, with a major in Environmental Policies, Institutions, and Behaviors, and a minor in Political Science. This year, I am here to serve as a free public resource for schools, municipalities, non-profits, watershed associations, scout troops, and anyone else interested in protecting our waterways. My host agency is the North Jersey Resource Conservation & Development office in Clinton, New Jersey.

Water is not only a source of recreation, used for such things as fishing, boating, and swimming, but also an invaluable renewable resource vital in maintaining healthy communities and households. However, it cannot stay clean on its own; that is where you and I come in.

One of the most important things we can do is to keep our communities educated. If you would like to schedule free presentations or demonstrations about any aspect of watershed management, contact me. I will work with you to develop customized lessons fitting with your needs and considering your audience. From brief overviews about the water cycle to field trainings on biological assessment, we can work together to teach both the young and the young at heart about how everything we do on land affects the water.

Another way we can get involved is to foster an appreciation of the water around us. We can create partnership events like canoe paddles, community fishing programs, stream walks, tree plantings, water festivals, and clean-ups to unite people across various groups and have some fun while encouraging a sense of environmental stewardship.

In addition to presentations and event-planning, I will be conducting a number of visual and biological assessments of WMA 1 waterways. With so many streams and rivers all over the watershed, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of volunteer monitoring in gathering data that water quality watchers can use in developing their plans of action. I am excited to be able to teach volunteers the protocols that must be followed in order to submit valid data that the NJ Department of Environmental Protection can use to assess the effects of non-point source pollution in our areas. If you or a group you are part of may be interested, please do not hesitate to give me a call. Also, if you are curious to what a monitoring entails, feel free to come along with me on any of the 50 visual and biological assessments I will be doing over the next year. There is always one coming up soon, and always another seat in the car.

This is just a glimpse of what we can do together this year. I love receiving ideas and suggestions for programs in your area, or answering any questions you might have about North Jersey RC&D, the NJ Watershed Ambassadors Program, or anything and everything water-related. I tend to be out in the field a great deal, but if you leave me a message or email, I am usually able to reply within a couple of days. Take care, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Adam Assenza
americorps@northjerseyrcd.org
(908) 735-0733 ext. 111

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