By day he’s Bernards Township’s Municipal Engineer and Planner. On weekends you’ll find him either racing his 20-year-old Ferrari or tending the gardens and wetlands around his Chester home.

For much of the rest of the time, as he has for the past three years, Peter A. Messina chairs the Ten Towns Great Swamp Watershed Management Committee – known usually, and more simply, as the Ten Towns Committee.

Talk even briefly with Pete Messina about the Ten Towns Committee, and you’ll hear the word "hands-on" over and over again. That’s because he wants to emphasize that his committee’s mission is not just to identify problems in the 55-square-mile watershed, but also to come up with answers – and implement them.

Messina serves the committee as a volunteer, as do 25 other local residents, most of them elected or appointed officials in the ten towns spanned by the watershed. The committee was formed in 1995 to develop a regional approach to monitoring and improving the health of the watershed, and especially the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. It is funded by contributions from each of the towns.

"We’re unique in New Jersey, for sure," says Messina, when asked how difficult it is to get ten municipalities, each with its own political and economic agenda, to agree on anything. "Outside the state, I don’t know – but I’m sure we’re in the vanguard of this kind of approach."

Since its birth in June 1995, the Ten Towns Committee has been cited for its groundbreaking work by numerous environmental groups and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).

The Ten Towns Committee claims a long relationship with GSWA. Indeed, Messina notes, GSWA was present at the committee’s birth, and has been an active participant since then. GSWA staffers and volunteers regularly attend its meetings, help carry out its projects, help find foundation support for its work, and serve on its Policy Advisory Committee.

"Right now," Messina explains, "the Watershed Association is helping us monitor the health of the five streams that empty into Great Swamp [Black Brook, Great Brook, Loantaka Brook, Primrose Brook, and the headwaters of the Passaic River]. Its ‘stream teams’ regularly gather water-flow and water-quality data before the streams enter the Refuge. This data is compared with water quality data after the Passaic River leaves the Refuge at Millington Gorge. These measures are providing the first hard data ever on how the health of the Refuge may be impacted by the water flowing through it. And the measures will let us see changes over time."

Another key agenda item for the Ten Towns Committee, Messina says, involves getting all ten municipalities to adopt ordinances promoting environmentally sensitive development – especially regulations that require builders to manage the land and stormwater runoff in environmentally responsible ways. [Link to scorecard]

"The Watershed Association has also supported this effort," he notes. "The Association is working now to identify and document methods, called ‘Blue-Green Technologies,’ that developers can use to manage stormwater runoff so it minimizes pollution, erosion and sedimentation."

Other current work of the Committee involves finding and fixing problem areas along local streams. "To date," Messina says, "our consultant has looked at every foot of the four-mile-long Loantaka Brook, and has identified over 100 specific problems – problems of erosion and roadway stream crossings. With information like this in hand, we can begin to implement holistic solutions instead of piecemeal ones."

As an example of one such holistic approach, Messina cites a current committee project to create "riparian buffers" by managing the growth of certain native plant species along the banks of watershed streams. This project has been funded by a $100,000 grant from the NJDEP.

Then there’s other ongoing work: documenting and analyzing vacant land in the ten towns (also in cooperation with GSWA); constructing demonstration projects with public funds; and spreading the environmental message in meetings of local organizations.

After describing these projects, Messina notes: "Sometimes it’s hard to recall just how tough it often was in the past to get cooperation across municipal boundaries. Our world here has changed dramatically since the birth of the Ten Towns Committee. We haven’t eliminated all threats to the health of Great Swamp, of course. And perhaps we never will. But we sure have started the ball rolling in the right direction, thanks to committee members and to our executive director, Peter Braun. And we’re grateful to organizations like the Watershed Association for the part they’re playing."

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