The Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor estuary is under threat. Suburban sprawl and over-development prompted the Governor of New Jersey in 2010 to direct the NJ Department of Environmental Protection to research and develop a protection plan for the Ocean County bay.
Citizens from the region, recreational users, commercial fisherman, activists, scientists, and land developers all shared their experiences with the NJDEP to develop a research strategy towards formulating new regulatory policies and a management plan for protecting the bay.
On Wednesday, August 15, 2018 join the Tuckerton Seaport and speaker Thomas Belton at 1:00PM during this session as it explores how his research impacted the protection and stewardship planning.
Issues of concern to the environmental regulatory agencies and the public include: nuisance jellyfish blooms, excess nutrients, the imminent closure of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant on the bay, the benefits of marine conservation zones, and the status of the fish, crab and shellfish populations.
Noteworthy is the collection of these data before and after Superstorm Sandy came ashore at BB-LEH, and its impact on the shallow bay.
This program is part of the NJ Council for the Humanities Public Scholars Project. Speaker Thomas Belton is a Research Associate in Science Writing with the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. He is a retired Senior Scientist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection where he served as the Research Coordinator for the Governor’s 2010-2016 Action Plan for the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary.
His book “Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State” was named an Honor Book by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities due to its ability to take complex scientific information and put it into language and entertaining stories that everyone can understand. In his book and his lectures, he points out how people search for environmental remedies in their neighborhoods and the challenges they face that result in what Belton calls bare-knuckles environmental protection, replete with back-room political deals, infighting, criminals, and hapless victims. Belton demonstrates the ways that scientists, regulators, lobbyists, and politicians interact and offers the public a go-to guide on how to seek environmental protection in practical ways.
The Tuckerton Seaport Located at 120 West Main Street in Tuckerton, New Jersey. For more information call 609-296-8868
Comments