Pitching in to rescue a 'slice of heaven'
Newton Lake "is our slice of heaven," says Melissa Martell. "We can just come down to the dock, look at the lake, and forget our troubles," the Oaklyn resident adds.
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Newton Lake "is our slice of heaven," says Melissa Martell.
"We can just come down to the dock, look at the lake, and forget our troubles," the Oaklyn resident adds.
"Out here," says Martell's partner, Janine Villano, "it doesn't look like South Jersey."
Soon, however, the shimmering waters of spring will give way to a warm-weather bumper crop of aquatic plants and "filamentous" algae, lending the neighborhood's beloved lake a pea soup hue.
No wonder Martell and Villano have a "Save Newton Lake" banner in front of their house, which stands on a bluff overlooking the water. They've got a similarly named Facebook page as well.
"Newton Lake is like a crock pot," says Mike Haberland, Camden County agent at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension.
"So little water comes in, it just sits there and cooks."
That's largely because Camden County created Newton Lake by damming the marsh-like Newton Creek and building a park along the 7,400-foot stretch between Cuthbert Boulevard in Haddon Township and the White Horse Pike in Oaklyn in the 1930s.
Since then, decades of suburban development have encouraged a steady supply of nutrient-rich sediment to to run into the lake.
Haberland says sedimentation lowers the water level and feeds the plants, including invasives like curly-leaf pondweed and natives like spatterdock (a.k.a. lily pads).
"Things are changing, and not for the better," says Martell and Villano's neighbor Sandy Harris, who has lived on the lake for a dozen years.
"I have a paddle boat, and I can't take it out because of the algae," says Harris, an avid kayaker and canoeist as well. "I have to use a Shop-Vac to suck up the algae from around my dock."
The county owns the lake's upper portion; the less-traveled lower portion that Harris and her neighbors treasure lies west of the White Horse Pike and has multiple municipal owners.
"We don't get a lot of attention," notes Harris.
In January, the Camden County freeholder board approved a $149,000 contract with F.X. Browne Inc. of Lansdale to design a plan that would include dredging at least some portions of the waterway.
"We don't want to have to dredge it again in 10 years," says Andrew Kricun, executive director of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority.
Oaklyn, meanwhile, is looking into how it might use its recently purchased $130,000 amphibious mower to ameliorate the weed and algae problem on the lower lake.
The borough has begun using the machine on nearby Peters Creek. "We took 25 tons of vegetation out of there," Mayor Robert Forbes says, adding that the borough "wants to at least do something" to reduce the vegetation in Newton.
Even during its problematic season, the lake offers a welcome oasis in a densely populated area. No wonder it has so many defenders.
"The algal blooms are a problem due to overfertilizing lawns" and paved surfaces that add to runoff, notes Janet Goehner-Jacobs, executive director of the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association.
"The lake is being fed too much, and it needs to go on a diet," says Collingswood environmentalist Keith Monahan.
Says Fred Stine, citizen action coordinator for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network: "We have to protect our investment in these lakes. And we have to find an ecologically sensitive balance - so the lakes are not choked with vegetation to the point where people can't enjoy them."
There's no guarantee dredging will happen any time soon (see: the county's over-budget Cooper River dredging project).
So it's heartening to know that the county, the borough, the Riverkeepers, the Conservation Association, and the "Save Newton Lake" Martell crew are all about pitching in so that, in Kricun's words, the lake is "restored and preserved."
The conservation association makes it a point to plant native species near the lake's headwaters "to help control pollution impacts . . . downstream," says Goehner-Jacobs.
"Rain gardens help manage runoff," Stine notes.
"People on the lake are very proactive," says Harris. "We are willing to do whatever we need to do."
And longtime Oaklyn resident Andrew Sims, a biology major at Rowan College of Gloucester County, says citizens could help prevent further erosion of the bluff and the lower lakeshore.
"Dredging is important, but it's treating the symptom," he says. "We could use the algae that's harvested by the machine to help rebuild the banks of the lake. Using the lake to rebuild the lake.
"We need to rebuild the slope and help prevent the runoff from going into the lake," Sims adds. "If it's done by us, the people, then we won't get to complain about it not getting done."
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