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The Borough of Mountain Lakes has received grant funding from the New Jersey Highlands Council to develop a comprehensive Lake and Watershed Management Plan for nine lakes within the Borough. To lead this effort, the Borough engaged Princeton Hydro, a leader in ecological and engineering consulting. The initiative will focus on characterizing hydrologic and nutrient dynamics within the Borough’s lake systems and watersheds to guide targeted water quality improvement and management strategies.
“Mountain Lakes takes great pride in our lakes, which play an important role in defining our community. Through our partnership with the Highlands Council and Princeton Hydro, we’re taking a proactive, data-driven approach to protecting both the environmental and recreational value of our lakes and waterways, with the goal of preserving these vital natural resources for generations to come,” said Borough of Mountain Lakes Manager Mitchell Stern.
A selection process was undertaken by the Borough of Mountain Lakes, Princeton Hydro, and the New Jersey Highlands Council to define the scope of this Lake and Watershed Management Program. In accordance with Policy 1L2 and Objective 1L2a of the NJHC Regional Master Plan, which establish lake management tiers and prioritize lakes greater than 10 acres for protection and management, nine lakes were selected for the study: Birchwood Lake, Crystal Lake, Wildwood Lake, Sunset Lake, Mountain Lake, Shadow Pond, Olive Pond, Grundens Pond, and Cove Pond. These lakes represent the waterbodies in the Borough and were chosen to ensure the program focuses on areas with the greatest potential impact on water quality, watershed function, and community value.

Princeton Hydro’s work will include watershed modeling, hydrologic and pollutant load analyses, and in-lake and watershed-based water quality monitoring. Once the data is analyzed, Princeton Hydro will develop a General Assessment Report that identifies the primary drivers of eutrophication and outlines a prioritized set of management strategies to effectively reduce nutrient loading and enhance long-term lake health.
“The regional, science-based approach to lake and watershed management has proven to be a powerful tool for municipalities in the Highlands Region,” said Christopher Mikolajczyk, CLM, Senior Manager of Aquatics at Princeton Hydro, Certified Lake Manager, and lead designer for this initiative. “We’re excited to collaborate with Mountain Lakes to help identify cost-effective, data-driven strategies that will enhance water quality throughout the watershed and help safeguard these treasured natural resources.”
The New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council (Highlands Council) is a regional planning agency that partners with municipalities and counties in the Highlands Region to promote proactive watershed protection. Established under the New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act of 2004, the Council has funded numerous water-quality-related planning initiatives.
Historically, municipalities and private lake associations have managed water quality issues independently. However, taking a coordinated, watershed-based approach enables communities to more effectively address pollution sources, improve water quality, and prevent the spread of invasive species and harmful algal blooms.
Mountain Lakes joins several other Highlands region municipalities that have received Highlands council funding to implement similar lake and watershed management initiatives. In 2019, the Borough of Ringwood became the first municipality in New Jerey to adopt a regional, public-private approach to lake management, partnering with four lake associations across six lakes. Since the completion of the Ringwood plan, NJDEP has funded recommendations from the plan. This model has since inspired additional projects, including watershed assessments for West Milford Township, Rockaway Township, Byram Township, Vernon Township, and Somerset County Parks Commission. Princeton Hydro worked with each agency to develop the respective scope of work to secure grant funding from the Highlands Council.

Photo from the Borough of Mountain Lakes.
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Most of us are familiar with the famous quote "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” This sentiment is at the center point of the Highlands Act and Regional Master Plan, which provides funding to help New Jersey’s Highlands communities take a proactive and regional approach to watershed protection.
Historically, private lake associations and municipalities have worked autonomously to address water quality issues and develop improvement plans. Working together, however, and taking a regional approach to lake and watershed management has much farther-reaching benefits. Taking an integrated approach helps improve water quality and reduce incidents of aquatic invasive species and harmful algal blooms (HABs) not just in one waterbody, but throughout an entire region.
The New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council (Highlands Council) is a regional planning agency that works in partnership with municipalities and counties in the Highlands Region of northern New Jersey to encourage exactly such an approach. Created as part of the 2004 New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act (the Highlands Act), the Highlands Council has funded numerous water-quality-related planning grants throughout the region.

“Watersheds are inherently regional; they don’t follow municipal boundaries. So the Highlands Council is in a unique position to address these challenges from that perspective,” says Keri Green, Highlands Council Science Manager. “It’s critical for municipalities to understand what is entering their lakes from the surrounding watershed before they can effectively address in-lake issues. Across the region, the stormwater inlets and roadways that encircle and affect lakes are owned and maintained by the municipalities, and when we can evaluate these inputs, we can plan for how to address impairments.”
In 2019, the Highlands Council funded a Lake Management planning grant for the Borough of Ringwood that adopted this wider watershed view, and would ultimately become a model for similar Highlands Council grants within the region. The Borough chose to engage the services of Princeton Hydro to support the project work.
“This regional approach to lake and watershed management is the obvious choice from a scientific, technical, and community point of view. Historically, however, this approach is rarely taken,” said Princeton Hydro’s Senior Project Manager, Christopher Mikolajczyk, who is a Certified Lake Manager and lead designer for this initiative. “We were thrilled to work with the Borough of Ringwood and the Highlands Council to set a precedent, which has opened the door for the Townships of West Milford and Rockaway, and will hopefully inspire the formation of more public-private lake management partnerships.”

Rockaway Receives Lake Management Planning Grant from the Highlands Council
Rockaway Township in Morris County, New Jersey received Highlands Council grant approval in January to complete a Lake Management Planning Study. Eleven small- to medium-sized lakes in the township are working together for a watershed assessment and comprehensive regional analysis, which will lead to the creation of a Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP). The WIP will recommend and prioritize key watershed management measures that will have big impacts on water quality improvement.
Given the large number of lakes in Rockaway Township, and in an effort to keep the study to a reasonable scope, a selection process occurred with input from the Township Engineering office, the Township Health Department, Princeton Hydro and the Highlands Council. The lakes in the Rockaway Township Watershed Management Program include Green Pond, Egbert Lake, Durham Pond, Lake Emma, Camp Lewis Lake, Lake Telemark, Lake Ames, Mount Hope Pond, Mount Hope Lake, White Meadow Lake, and Fox’s Pond.
“Rockaway Township has been proactive about implementing watershed improvement projects in the past, so we were happy to provide funding to support continuing their efforts focusing on these 11 lakes,” explains Lisa Plevin, Highlands Council Executive Director. “It was a very productive collaboration with Highlands staff working in partnership with the Township to develop an approach and Princeton Hydro preparing a scope of work that met everyone’s goals.”
The watershed assessment will entail a number of analyses, including watershed modeling; hydrologic and pollutant loading analysis; watershed-based and in-lake water quality assessments; and tropic state assessments. The assessment aims to:


 	
Identify, quantify and prioritize the watershed-based factors which may cause eutrophication;
 	
Identify the watershed management measures needed to address general causes of water quality impairments;
 	
Identify the relative cost of the recommended general watershed management measures; and
 	
Generate a general schedule, based on priority, for the implementation of the recommended watershed management measures.

Once all the lab data is processed, the watershed modeling is complete, and historical data reviewed, Princeton Hydro will create a General Assessment Report that will summarize the data/observations and identify which watershed management techniques and measures are best suited for immediate or long-term implementation. The team expects to complete the General Assessment Report in the spring of 2022, after a year's worth of 2021 growing season data has been collected.

A Watershed Management Program is Underway in West Milford
In October 2020, the Highlands Council approved funding to support a watershed assessment of 22 private and public lakes in West Milford Township. The watershed assessment project is being implemented in two phases:
For Phase 1, which will take place throughout the course of 2021, Princeton Hydro will provide a historic data review; an examination of hydrologic/pollutant loads; a pollutant removal analysis; and watershed water quality analysis. The pollutants to be modeled include phosphorus, nitrogen, sediment, and bacteria, while the hydrology will include estimates of precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration, groundwater flux, and ultimately streamflow or discharge.
This analysis will aid the Township in selecting, prioritizing and implementing nutrient and sediment load and stormwater management efforts with a focus on watershed projects that have the greatest overall benefit to the long-term management of surface water quality. The report will also identify examples of site-specific locations where wetland buffers, riparian buffers, and lakefront aqua-scaping can be implemented as part of future watershed management efforts.
For Phase 2 of the project, Princeton Hydro will investigate and assess the water quality of each of the lakes in West Milford Township during the growing season of May - October of 2022. This entails collecting bimonthly water quality samples at each lake, including in-situ water quality data consisting of real-time measurement of clarity, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH. The sampling events will also include a general survey of aquatic vegetation and/or algae growth, lake perimeter shoreline observations, and monitoring for nuisance waterfowl. These surveys will provide an objective understanding of the amount and distribution of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and algae occurring throughout each lake over the course of the growing season.
The lakes included in this project are: High Crest Lake, Algonquin Waters, Lake Lookover, Kitchell Lake, Lindys Lake, Mt. Laurel Lake, Shady Lake, Wonder Lake, Mount Glen Lakes (Upper/Lower), Carpi Lake, Pinecliff Lake, Van Nostrand Lake, Upper Greenwood Lake, Post Brook Farms, Farm Crest Acres, Mt. Springs Lake, Forest Hill Park, Johns Lake, Gordon Lake, and Bubbling Springs Lake.

Leading the Way on Regional Lake Management in Ringwood, NJ
At the end of 2019, the Borough of Ringwood became the first municipality in New Jersey to take a regional approach to private lake management through a public-private partnership with four lake associations: Cupsaw, Erskine, Skyline, and Riconda.
The Borough of Ringwood is situated in the northeast corner of the New Jersey Highlands, is home to several public and private lakes, and provides drinking water to millions of New Jersey residents. In order to take an active role in the management of these natural resources, Ringwood hired Princeton Hydro to design a municipal-wide holistic watershed management plan that identifies and prioritizes watershed management techniques and measures that are best suited for immediate and long-term implementation.
Princeton Hydro recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the lakes and watersheds of Ringwood Borough. The assessment included a historical data review, hydrologic and pollutant loading analysis and in-lake and watershed based water quality data studies. The report details the results of Princeton Hydro’s mapping, modeling, and monitoring efforts in each waterbody and its respective watershed, along with specific recommendations for management implementations that are aimed at curbing the effects of nutrient and sediment loading, both within the lakes and their respective watersheds.
“Ringwood, West Milford, and Rockaway are three great examples of how people from different affiliations and backgrounds can come together to address lake and watershed monitoring and management,” said Mikolajczyk. “The key to success is open communication and a common goal!”
To learn more about Princeton Hydro’s natural resource management services, click here. And, click here to learn more about NJ Highlands Council and available grant funding.
                    [post_title] => Private & Public Lake Communities in NJ's Highlands Region Partner to Reduce HABs
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Harmful Algae Blooms (HABs) were in the spotlight last summer due to the severe impacts they had on lakes throughout the country. Nation-wide, HABs caused beach closures, restricted lake usage, and led to wide-ranging health advisories. There were 39 confirmed harmful algal bloom (HAB) outbreaks in New Jersey alone.
As a reminder, HABs are rapid, large overgrowths of cyanobacteria. These microorganisms are a natural part of aquatic ecosystems, but, under the right conditions (primarily heavy rains, followed by hot, sunny days), these organisms can rapidly increase to form cyanobacteria blooms, also known as HABs. HABs can cause significant water quality issues; produce toxins that are incredibly harmful (even deadly) to humans, animals, and aquatic organisms; and negatively impact economic health, especially for communities dependent on the income of jobs and tourism generated through their local lakes.
“A property’s value near an infested lake can drop by up to $85,000, and waterside communities can lose millions of dollars in revenue from tourism, boating, fishing and other sectors,” reports Princeton Hydro President Geoff Goll, P.E.
Generally, the health of a private lake is funded and managed in isolation by the governing private lake association group. But, in order to mitigate HABs and protect the overall health of our local waterbodies, it’s important that we look beyond just the lake itself. Implementing regional/watershed-based planning is a critical step in preventing the spread of HABs and maintaining the overall health of our natural resources.
At the end of 2019, the Borough of Ringwood became the first municipality in New Jersey to take a regional approach to private lake management through a public-private partnership with four lake associations.
The Borough of Ringwood is situated in the heart of the New Jersey Highlands, is home to several public and private lakes, and provides drinking water to millions of New Jersey residents. In order to take an active role in the management of these natural resources, Ringwood hired Princeton Hydro, a leader in ecological and engineering consulting, to design a municipal-wide holistic watershed management plan that identifies and prioritizes watershed management techniques and measures that are best suited for immediate and long-term implementation.

Funding for Ringwood’s Watershed-based Assessment is being provided by the New Jersey Highlands Council through a grant reimbursement to the Borough of Ringwood. The Highlands Council offers grant funding and assistance to support the development and implementation of a wide range of planning initiatives. Examples of the types of efforts that can be funded for municipalities and counties include:


 	
Land Use and Development projects like sustainable economic development planning and green building and environmental sustainability planning;
 	
Infrastructure projects like stormwater management and water use/conservation management;
 	
Resource Management projects like habitat conservation, lake management and water quality monitoring; and
 	
Recreation and Preservation projects like land preservation and stewardship, farmland preservation and agriculture retention, and historic preservation.

Chris Mikolajczyk, CLM, Princeton Hydro’s Aquatics Senior Project Manager and the Ringwood project’s lead designer, presented with Keri Green of the NJ Highlands Council, at a recent New Jersey Coalition of Lake Associations meeting. The duo showcased Ringwood’s unique approach, spread the word about available funding through the NJ Highlands Council, and encourage other municipalities to follow Ringwood’s lead in taking a regional approach to lake and watershed management.
Mikolajczyk said, “This regional approach to lake and watershed management is a no-brainer from a scientific, technical, and community point of view. Historically, however, municipal governments and private lake associations have rarely partnered to take such an approach. The hope is that the Borough of Ringwood efforts, funded by the New Jersey Highlands Council, will set a precedent for this logical watershed management strategy and open the door for future public-private partnerships.”
This integrated approach to watershed and lake management is an important preventative measure to improve water quality for millions of people and reduce potential future incidents of aquatic invasive species and harmful algal blooms throughout the region.
To learn more about NJ Highlands Council and available grant funding, go here.
To download a complete copy of the presentations given by Mikolajczyk and Green at the recent NJCOLA meeting, go here.
To learn more about Princeton Hydro’s pond, lake and watershed management services, go here.
 
…
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The Borough of Mountain Lakes has received grant funding from the New Jersey Highlands Council to develop a comprehensive Lake and Watershed Management Plan for nine lakes within the Borough. To lead this effort, the Borough engaged Princeton Hydro, a leader in ecological and engineering consulting. The initiative will focus on characterizing hydrologic and nutrient dynamics within the Borough’s lake systems and watersheds to guide targeted water quality improvement and management strategies.
“Mountain Lakes takes great pride in our lakes, which play an important role in defining our community. Through our partnership with the Highlands Council and Princeton Hydro, we’re taking a proactive, data-driven approach to protecting both the environmental and recreational value of our lakes and waterways, with the goal of preserving these vital natural resources for generations to come,” said Borough of Mountain Lakes Manager Mitchell Stern.
A selection process was undertaken by the Borough of Mountain Lakes, Princeton Hydro, and the New Jersey Highlands Council to define the scope of this Lake and Watershed Management Program. In accordance with Policy 1L2 and Objective 1L2a of the NJHC Regional Master Plan, which establish lake management tiers and prioritize lakes greater than 10 acres for protection and management, nine lakes were selected for the study: Birchwood Lake, Crystal Lake, Wildwood Lake, Sunset Lake, Mountain Lake, Shadow Pond, Olive Pond, Grundens Pond, and Cove Pond. These lakes represent the waterbodies in the Borough and were chosen to ensure the program focuses on areas with the greatest potential impact on water quality, watershed function, and community value.

Princeton Hydro’s work will include watershed modeling, hydrologic and pollutant load analyses, and in-lake and watershed-based water quality monitoring. Once the data is analyzed, Princeton Hydro will develop a General Assessment Report that identifies the primary drivers of eutrophication and outlines a prioritized set of management strategies to effectively reduce nutrient loading and enhance long-term lake health.
“The regional, science-based approach to lake and watershed management has proven to be a powerful tool for municipalities in the Highlands Region,” said Christopher Mikolajczyk, CLM, Senior Manager of Aquatics at Princeton Hydro, Certified Lake Manager, and lead designer for this initiative. “We’re excited to collaborate with Mountain Lakes to help identify cost-effective, data-driven strategies that will enhance water quality throughout the watershed and help safeguard these treasured natural resources.”
The New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council (Highlands Council) is a regional planning agency that partners with municipalities and counties in the Highlands Region to promote proactive watershed protection. Established under the New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act of 2004, the Council has funded numerous water-quality-related planning initiatives.
Historically, municipalities and private lake associations have managed water quality issues independently. However, taking a coordinated, watershed-based approach enables communities to more effectively address pollution sources, improve water quality, and prevent the spread of invasive species and harmful algal blooms.
Mountain Lakes joins several other Highlands region municipalities that have received Highlands council funding to implement similar lake and watershed management initiatives. In 2019, the Borough of Ringwood became the first municipality in New Jerey to adopt a regional, public-private approach to lake management, partnering with four lake associations across six lakes. Since the completion of the Ringwood plan, NJDEP has funded recommendations from the plan. This model has since inspired additional projects, including watershed assessments for West Milford Township, Rockaway Township, Byram Township, Vernon Township, and Somerset County Parks Commission. Princeton Hydro worked with each agency to develop the respective scope of work to secure grant funding from the Highlands Council.

Photo from the Borough of Mountain Lakes.
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    [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array
        (
            [0] => init_query_flags
            [1] => parse_tax_query
        )

    [query_cache_key:WP_Query:private] => wp_query:efcb0ba59053427e2f22bf488faa511c:0.29893500 17751163190.29307500 1775116319
)

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Tag: New Jersey Highlands Council