Will college students save a South Jersey lake?

BRIDGETON, N.J. - Renee Parisi held a tiny vial of water in her hand and noted its brackish color.

The sample came from nearby Sunset Lake, where Parisi and a group of about 30 fellow students from Stockton University are trying to determine what has - for years - been making the picturesque waterway environmentally unsuitable for swimming and fishing.

The lake is a focal point of the 1,100-acre Bridgeton City Park, which also features the 15-acre Cohanzick Zoo. The zoo, however, is downstream from the lake and is an unlikely source of the contamination, officials said.

"It looks a little greenish . . . but that might not be a bad thing," said Parisi, 21, a fourth-year environmental-sciences student from South Plainfield. "It will be interesting to see what these readings tell us when we have established a baseline."

Obtaining the sample and placing it into a handheld device called a Hach Colorimeter - it looks more like a retail credit card machine than it does a water monitor - was among the first steps in solving the mystery that goes back decades.

Local officials had hoped that an "environmental reset" had occurred when the lake was reopened 16 months ago after a deadly derecho exploded over southern New Jersey in June 2012, flooding the region and bursting dams here and upstream that subsequently left the lake drained of water. Sunset Lake remained a muddy, open marsh for about three years.

"We were hoping the storm would have provided kind of a reset on the issue," said Kevin Rabago, Bridgeton's director of development and planning. "It has always been a strange pattern because one week the water quality in the lake will be just fine and the next week it tests for high levels of fecal matter. We've worked for years to figure out what could be causing it."

When the storm marched through the region, it killed two young children camping with their parents in nearby Parvin State Park and cut miles-wide swaths of destruction through Cumberland and Atlantic Counties.

Not only were dams destroyed and roadways washed away, but also winds and heavy rains spawned tornadolike conditions that ravaged farmlands and woodlands and brought down thousands of trees. At the height of the storm, as many as 260,000 people in the region lost power.

But after spending $3.6 million to repair Sunset Lake - and a nearby waterway called the Raceway, which meanders through the city park and connects with the Cohansey River - it was reopened in June 2015. Yet issues with fecal bacteria levels and dissolved oxygen concentrations remained in the lake.

Studies made at the time by the state Department of Environmental Protection and Rutgers University's Agricultural Experiment Station were inconclusive in determining the sources of the contamination, said Bridgeton Mayor Albert B. Kelly.

"Our goal at this point is to figure out what the sources of the contamination could be so that we can deal with it and ultimately use Sunset Lake as another recreation resource for our residents," Kelly said.

So at Kelly's invitation to use Bridgeton as an "open classroom," the environmental students since late September have been making the twice-weekly, nearly three-hour round-trip to travel from Galloway Township in Atlantic County to Bridgeton in Cumberland County to spend about 90 minutes pulling samples and recording their findings, according to Emma Witt, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Stockton.

Witt has organized the students into three teams: one focusing on water quality in the lake and watershed and evaluating the hydrology and in the nearby Cohansey River; another evaluating the aquatic, terrestrial, and avian wildlife resources on and around the lake; and a third inventorying and assessing the "more complex and delicate" natural resources that are part of Bridgeton City Park and the lower Cohansey watershed.

The teams will collaborate on a report about the lake that will be presented to the mayor and city council in November, Witt said.

"It'll be helpful for the city to be given a snapshot of where the lake is environmentally right now," Witt said. "And it gives the students a chance to have a real-world experience outside of the classroom looking at an issue and trying - if not to solve the problem - to make recommendations on how it could be solved."

A big part of solving that problem will be to look at source points for the high fecal levels - whether they are derived directly from animals or humans or from farm fertilizers upstream, Witt said.

In the meantime, Rabago, who also serves as a special assistant to Mayor Kelly, said the Stockton project may "ultimately help us drill down" to the cause - and possible solution - of the lake's water-quality issues.

"We hope to find a long-term solution," Rabago said. "But at the end of the day if we don't right now, there at least has been value in allowing these students to get hands-on experience in trying to solve the problem."

Rabago said the city hopes to extend the "open classroom" concept as far as it can and recently worked with Cumberland County College to develop a marketing strategy for its beleaguered downtown, where empty storefronts have populated its once-thriving city center for decades.

Peter Straub, Stockton's dean of natural sciences and mathematics, called the Bridgeton-Stockton alliance "encouraging" for both communities.

"Focusing our environmental science program on Bridgeton is a way to help the community inventory and assess some of their outstanding natural resources," Straub said. "At the same time, public-service-related efforts also help Stockton University understand and respond to the unique challenges facing communities throughout our service region."

jurgo@phillynews.com

609-652-8382 @JacquelineUrgo