Tracking Changes to Stream Health in Cumberland County

For years, the American Littoral Society has been hard at work understanding and improving the health of freshwater streams in Cumberland County, NJ. From 2018-2023, as part of a project funded by the William Penn Foundation, we collected vital data at five sites across the Cohansey and Maurice River Watersheds.

Why? Because all these streams flow into the Delaware Bay, and a healthy bay starts with healthy streams. Our goal was to establish baselines and track changes in stream health, particularly near our green stormwater management projects, ensuring our efforts are making a real difference.

We've chronicled our findings about several other streams, such as Loper Run and Barretts Run, in previous blog posts. 

Now, we're going to take a look at Indian Field Branch in Bridgeton, which is a site that struggles with being a heathy ecosystem. Most of the stream is channeled, with concrete along much of its length and with the streambed being mostly made up of concrete blocks.

Unsurprisingly, the score we get from collecting and identifying benthic macroinvertebrates is lowest here – although not quite as low as you might think my looks alone. This stream also tends to accumulate trash, which our Restoration Corps crew have helped to clean up in the past.

The site is located just down the road from the Alms Center in Bridgeton, as well as “Triangle Park” - which is a small restoration project where we installed a rain garden and planted trees.

We have another one of our continuous water meters at this site, data from which can also be viewed by the general public. The R-Corps crew, as part of their training, get certified in both biological and habitat assessments, and this data is submitted to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).

We are working hard to improve water quality in this stream and in the larger city of Bridgeton. This includes both our project at Triangle Park, numerous rain gardens that we have installed at area schools and residences, our participation in the city’s biannual citywide clean-up, as well as future projects that will involve planting street trees.

Someday we anticipate these will all be thriving freshwater ecosystems that will feed clean water into the Delaware Bay, improving conditions for both people and wildlife.

---