Eco-Cruises

Like last year, 2002 was a very successful one for our Eco-Cruise Program. During the course of the season which ran from May 3 to November 1, 2002, almost two thousand people (1,959 to be exact) accompanied Capt. Bill and Capt. Hugh Carola aboard the Edward Abbey and Robert H. Boyle. About half of that number was schoolchildren and their teachers including 664 participants from urban areas, including Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne, Elizabeth, Passaic, Hackensack, Hoboken, and Union City.  We scheduled a record number of thirty-seven Open Boat Eco-Cruises.

However, an equally impressive record number of thirty-four Eco-Cruises (not all open-cruises) were rained out. And during a drought emergency at that! One forgettable weekend in early October forced the cancellation of four out of five trips. All told, we were able to conduct 117 Eco-Cruises including the following highlights: 

·       Hackensack Riverkeeper provided three Eco-Cruises for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (including One for the Director of the Service, Mr. Steve Winters), three for the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection (including one for the Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement, Lisa Jackson), two for Rep. Steven R. Rothman (NJ-9th), two for Bayonne officials to inspect the City’s waterfront, a trip for executives of Public Service Electric and Gas Company and one for the Hudson County Parks Department.   

• Twenty-one Eco-Cruises (for 318 people) were conducted in accordance with an annual grant from Shop-Rite Supermarkets that helps Hackensack Riverkeeper underwrite special Eco-Cruises and programs for underprivileged school districts.
• Twenty Eco-Cruises (for 318 people) were conducted as part of day-long educational field trips that also included Eco-Walks and other shore side activities depending upon the ages of the students involved (for example, high school students took part in water quality testing while elementary school students worked with the EnviroScape® non-point source pollution model and/or journal writing and sketching.
• Two Eco-Cruises were conducted for the Bergen County Special Services School District for 29 special needs students.

Hackensack Riverkeeper canoes could be seen on every section of the river from Oradell to Kearny and many of the marshes and tributaries in between.  As in the past, the majority of the paddlers ventured into the Sawmill Creek Wildlife Management Area for some up-close observation of the myriad wetland fauna.

We added three new programs to the Canoe Project this year.  First was the inclusion of 6 scheduled guided 2-hour tours for the public (of which two were rained out).  Second, we added a frequent paddler discount program which offered incentives to repeat paddlers, and while many paddlers did not take advantage of the program, some were able to accrue significant discounts. 

The third was an ecology based canoe camp that took campers to Congers Lake in Clarkstown, NY (the upper reach of our watershed) and then down through the lower half of the river below the Oradell Dam.  The 13 campers accumulated 355 hours of paddling and another 700 hours of watershed-related land-based activities.  We would like to thank the administrations of Clarkstown and Congers Lake Memorial Park for allowing us to bring this program into their community.

This year, there were a total of 147 separate paddling events from April through October.  In all, 935 people spent a total of 1973.5 hours on the river.  Of the 147 events:

119 were small independent groups of people wanting to paddle the marshes and/or river

17 were guided tours for clubs, schools, scouts or members of the Press

2 were part of a major River festival

6 were associated with our Clean-up program

2 were part of our new Eco-Canoe Summer Camp Program

1 was an event that saw Capt Bill, Hugh Carola, Senator Jon Corzine, Congressman Steve Rothman, NJMC Executive Director Bob Ceberio, and others on the marsh discussing watershed issues

River Cleanups

This year, our growing league of volunteers completed 7 cleanups—one each month from April to October.  The sites included Laurel Hill County Park (Secaucus), Pascack Brook County Park (Westwood), Lincoln Park (Jersey City), Waterfront Park (Ridgefield Park), Overpeck Creek County Park (Leonia), Hackensack River County Park (Hackensack), and Snipes Park (Secaucus).

There were at least 10 volunteers at all cleanups and many had more than 30…totaling about 600 volunteer hours. The 150 volunteers that were able to attend these events ventured out both by foot and canoe.  Together, they cleaned approximately 14,750 linear feet (approximately 2.8 miles) of stream and river bank, not including the land-based efforts of cleaning miles of trails, ponds and other common areas.