What's In Jeffrey's Creek? Save Barnegat Bay Students Share Results
BERKELEY, NJ — You may know it as Jeffrey’s Creek, you may know it as “the duck pond,” you might not know it by any name at all. Part of the Barnegat Bay watershed, this creek flows into the Toms River.
You may not know much about this creek. But three young students with Save Barnegat Bay’s Student Grant Program spent this summer studying it and learning all about its water quality. They shared their results at a recent Berkeley Township Council meeting.
Six different sites along the creek, which runs through Bayville and Ocean Gate, over the course of seven weeks. They tested the water for things like turbidity (how cloudy or clear the water is), chlorophyll levels and E.coli levels. These all reflect the quality of the water.
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Every site tested higher than the EPA standards of E.coli colonies for recreational bodies of water, according to the students. Sources can be waste from humans, domestic animals or waterfowl – and if you’re familiar with Jeffrey’s Creek, you know there’s plenty of the latter.
The students also found that chlorophyll is compounding throughout the sites, and turbidity measures saw higher values upstream. So, after their study, they advised that Ocean Gate residents no longer feed waterfowl in Jeffrey’s Creek. They also encouraged further investigation into the flow rate of the creek.
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Now that this study is complete, a baseline exists for further studying.
“Save Barnegat Bay just doesn’t take care of Barnegat Bay,” said Mayor John Bacchione. “It’s all the estuaries, not just in Berkeley Township, but all of Ocean County. So it’s important that we preserve all these estuaries as best we can, try not to pollute them, try to keep them as natural as possible.”
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