Event Overview

New Jersey Adopt a Beach Program

Coastal Cleanups

April 25, 2009 - Belmar, New Jersey

New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection’s Adopt a Beach program fosters volunteer stewardship of the State's coastal beaches and reduces the threat of marine debris to fish and wildlife. The DEP selects two days per year, one in the spring and one in the fall, for coastal-wide cleanups. Program volunteers adopt beaches for one year, agreeing to clean the beach of litter and debris on designated cleanup days. Adopt a Beach community action volunteers have been removing marine debris from the State's shorelines since 1993.

There are three National Estuary Programs in New Jersey: Barnegat Bay Estuary Program, Delaware Estuary Program and New York/New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. The National Estuary Program was established by Congress in 1987 to improve the quality of estuaries of national importance. The Clean Water Act Section 320 directs the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop plans for attaining or maintaining water quality in an estuary. This includes protection of public water supplies and the protection and propagation of a balanced, indigenous population of shellfish, fish, and wildlife, and allows recreational activities, in and on water, requires that control of point and nonpoint sources of pollution to supplement existing controls of pollution. Each coastal clean-up program establishes a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan to meet the goals of Section 320.

From the Atlantic Highlands to Cape May, volunteers comb New Jersey's beaches to pick up trash as part of the program. The Beta Alpha Phi Chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society at Hudson County Community College hosted the New Jersey Spring Adopt-A-Beach Clean-up in Belmar, New Jersey on April 25.  

The chapter sent 23 volunteers, who were joined by over eighty volunteers from sister Phi Theta Kappa chapters from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Over 300 pounds of garbage were picked up from the beach in less than two hours.

Related links:

• http://www.nj.gov/dep/watershedmgt/delaware_estuary.htm
• http://www.nj.gov/dep/watershedmgt/bbep.htm
• http://www.nj.gov/dep/watershedmgt/hep.htm
• http://www.harborestuary.org/
• http://www.harborestuary.org/stewardshipdatabase.htm
• http://www.nj.gov/dep/watershedmgt/adopt_a_beach.htm
• New Jersey Real-Time News Article >