Watershed Implementation Plan for Cooper River Lake

The Cooper River Watershed is a 39.5 square mile tributary to the Delaware River within the Delaware River Basin. It is characterized by extensive residential and commercial development and a number of highly degraded waterbodies. Near the mouth of the Cooper River, a tidal dam forms Cooper River Lake (CRL). This 192-acre public lake has a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for total phosphorus (TP) and a variety of other nonpoint source pollutants. Immediately upstream of CRL are Wallworth Lake and Evans Pond which suffer the same impairments as CRL.

CRL is the centerpiece of Camden County’s 347-acre Cooper River Park; Evans Pond and Wallworth Lake are within Camden County’s Wallworth Park (56 acres). These waterbodies are part of Camden County’s greenway and provide recreational opportunities to the overburdened communities (OBCs) that surround them. These waterbodies also provide significant water quality services to the watershed, such as regional stormwater attenuation and sediment trapping. Unfortunately, the highly degraded condition of this watershed is well documented. Further, in 2020 a harmful algal bloom (HAB) was confirmed by NJDEP within Hopkins Pond, a waterbody upstream of CRL, with toxin levels posing a high risk of adverse health effects.

Camden County Soil Conservation District (CCSCD) was awarded funding through NJDEP’s Lake Restoration Grant program to develop a USEPA 9-Element Plus 1 Watershed Implementation Plan (9E+1 WIP) for the CRL watershed, including Evans Pond, Wallworth Lake, and Hopkins Pond. The goal of the WIP is to develop a strategy to cost effectively identify and address the potential watershed impacts through in-lake and watershed-based management activities, with designs to address impacts driven by climate change.

Through stakeholder engagement and the review of historical data, the project team is determining sources of pollutant loading in the watershed. The team will utilize the results, and the data collected during the water quality monitoring and watershed assessment to characterize and prioritize areas that and locations that would be optimal for best management practices and green infrastructure. Ultimately, the project team will develop a comprehensive Cooper River Lake Watershed Implementation Plan. Princeton Hydro is in the process of completing a 1-year detailed sampling and surveying exercise of the CRL watershed for the purpose of collecting the data needed to assess the lake and streams within and design the lake/stream protection and watershed management plan. In addition to the above mentioned tasks, Princeton Hydro also conducted bathymetric assessments of CRL, Evans Pond, and Wallworth Lake.