The European settlers, like the Native Americans who preceded them, used the Meadowlands and other wetlands as a source of fish, oysters, fowl, and small mammals for food, furs, and sport McCay, ; MacKenzie, The European settlers also began extracting another natural resource: salt hay for feeding and bedding livestock.
The founders of Newark introduced the practice of dividing the Meadowlands into long, narrow lots, which were allocated to the male heads of households. Owners were required to excavate small ditches six feet wide and two feet deep to identify property boundaries Shaw, The settlers and their descendants engaged in the large-scale harvesting of salt hay for more than two centuries, from the s through the s. The cutting and piling of salt hay usually occurred in mid-autumn, but the hay was not removed until winter, when horses could be brought into the frozen wetlands Seybold, ; Stilgoe, An newspaper reported "hundreds of men" harvesting salt hay, using "old style scythes, long-handled rakes, and two-tined pitchforks of the olden time," since it was "impossible to use mowing machines, horse rakes, or other improved machinery on the soft marshes.
The harvesting of salt hay declined during the early s because of changing regional agricultural patterns and local transportation habits. Most of the region's farms began to specialize in truck gardening and nursery work as dairy-farming operations migrated to upstate New York and the Great Lakes area. At the same time, horses were being replaced by tractors for farmwork and by automobiles and trucks for transportation.
From the s through the 20th century, various engineering projects altered the area's hydrology by decreasing the flow of freshwater and increasing the flow of saltwater into and through the Meadowlands. Prior to the late s, water flowing at the mouths of the Passaic and Hackensack rivers into Newark Bay was fresh enough for cattle to drink "The Newark Meadows," However, the acceleration of human-engineered alterations of water flow in the Hackensack Meadows in the early s rapidly and drastically altered the salinity of its waters.
Construction of dams to create millponds along the Passaic and Hackensack rivers and their tributaries began diminishing the rivers' flow during the late s and s.
In the s, construction of the Morris Canal, the eastern half of which drew water from the tributaries of the Passaic River, further decreased the flow along the lower Passaic River Kalata, Newark and Jersey City, the two largest cities in New Jersey, started pumping water from the Passaic River in the mids for their municipal water supplies. The flow of freshwater in the Hackensack River was also reduced by diversion into municipal water systems during the mids. The Hackensack Water Company was created in the late s to supply the cities of Hoboken, Weehawken, and Hackensack.
It initially used a system of wells, pumping stations, and holding pools along the Hackensack River to obtain water, but the region's growing population soon required larger volumes and a more extensive infrastructure. Starting in , the water company began constructing dams and reservoirs throughout the Hackensack River watershed, initially at Woodcliffe and later at Oradell and Clarkstown Clayton, ; Van Valen, ; Van Winkle, ; Leiby, Figure 6: U. Extensive dredging of the Passaic and Hackensack rivers from the late s onward further altered the waters of the Hackensack Meadowlands.
Initially both rivers had shallow beds: In the U. Coast Survey measured depths of 5 to 7 feet inside the mouth of the Passaic River and depths of 10 to 18 feet at the mouth of the Hackensack River U. Coast Survey, Figure 6. The dredging allowed larger amounts of seawater to flow north from Newark Bay into the rivers' deepened channels. During the late s the U.
During the s, the corps dredged a foot-wide channel 10 feet deep along the lower Passaic River bordering Newark. Army Corps of Engineers, Dredging of the Hackensack River began in the s, when the corps dug a foot-deep channel. The channel varies between and feet in width. The decrease in the volume of freshwater flowing in the Passaic and Hackensack rivers and the dredging of the riverbeds to three to four times their original depths allowed the saltwater in Newark Bay to flow farther and farther north into the Hackensack Meadows.
The freshwater wetlands at the northern part of the Hackensack Meadows began turning brackish, and the brackish wetlands in the middle and southern part of the Hackensack Meadows were transformed into saltwater habitats.
Phragmites and other plants associated with brackish and freshwater wetlands were displaced by Spartina and other species associated with saltwater wetlands Ehrenfeld, ; Ravit, The only forested area now located within the boundaries of the Meadowlands is a small grove of deciduous trees at Schmidt's Park in an upland section of Secaucus.
The third type of human alteration of the Meadowlands was the structural transformation of portions of wetlands into dry upland. The initial efforts, during the 19th century, were land-reclamation projects involving dikes and drains that left the reclaimed acreage below the high-tide level. Later, in the 20th century, land-making projects resulted in new upland above the high-tide level.
Both types of projects were aimed at "improving" wetlands by transforming them into dry upland suitable for agricultural, commercial, and industrial uses. Distinctions between the different types of structural transformation and the appropriate terminology were commendably noted in a recent comprehensive study of Boston's former wetlands Seasholes, :.
The Newark and Hackensack meadows experienced a pattern of development different from that of the Boston wetlands because the initial wetlands development projects were land-reclamation efforts. The largest pre—Civil War projects were undertaken by the New York City—based Swartwout family, from the s through the s. Robert Swartwout and his brothers organized a variety of companies to construct a system of earthen dikes and tidal gates to reclaim several square miles of land located between the lower Hackensack and Passaic rivers and develop them as farmland.
Their companies, however, were all economic failures Sullivan, ; Brooks, The next major reclamation project occurred after the end of the Civil War. An engineer, Spencer B. Driggs, teamed up with New York City real estate developer Samuel Pike to reclaim the same portion of the Meadowlands as the Swartwouts had. They also introduced the practice of building the earthen dikes around large overlapping iron plates, designed to prevent muskrats and other animals from burrowing through and weakening the dikes.
The death of Pike in and the onset of the financial depression of led to the abandonment of the project Figures 7 and 8. During the latter half of the 19th century, government officials joined private businessmen in advocating development of the Meadowlands. Several influential Newark businessmen and two U. State geologists issued reports recommending the reclamation of the Meadowlands, which they characteristically described as "a blot upon an otherwise fair landscape," using a combination of dikes and dredged navigation channels Vermeule, , Until the early s, all development proposals for the Meadowlands were based on reclamation technologies using dikes and drains similar to those used in the Netherlands albeit without windmills.
According to these plans, the reclaimed land would lie below the high-tide level and would be devoted to farming. Although cities and industries were located behind dikes in the Netherlands and behind Mississippi River levees in Louisiana, none of the 19th-century Meadowlands reclamation projects proposed using the reclaimed lands for any purpose except farming. In the 20th century, however, the major Meadowlands reclamation proposals advocated the more expensive land-making technologies of dredging and filling in.
Instead of creating reclaimed land lying below the level of high tide, the developers proposed using massive amounts of fill to permanently elevate the reclaimed land several feet above high tide. Some of the fill would be obtained by dredging navigation channels in nearby rivers and bays. Other sources of fill were municipal garbage and excavation debris from the construction of tunnels, skyscraper foundations, and subways.
This new reclamation method was much more expensive, but proponents argued that the resulting permanent upland could be used for a larger number of activities. The higher initial investment would be offset by higher rents and larger profits realized from developing the new upland, assured by the increasing demand for real estate arising from the growing metropolis.
The burgeoning urban population in the late s created a growing demand for land in the vicinity of New York City. Between and , the city's population increased from 1. In New Jersey, Newark grew from , to , Mitchell, In , the combined population of Essex, Union, Hudson, and Bergen counties was only , persons; by , the combined population of the four counties had nearly tripled, to , N. Starting in the early s, the New Jersey Terminal Dock and Land Improvement Company began attempting to transform five square miles of land between the Hackensack and Passaic rivers the same site as the Swartwouts' and the Driggs-Pike projects.
The company's organizers were associated with a firm engaged in dredging Ambrose Channel in New York Harbor and other dredging projects in Newark Bay and the Passaic River. In addition to the dredge spoils from its projects, the company also used excavation debris from the construction of the trans-Hudson tunnels and garbage transported in barges from New York City.
The expanding urban population, combined with increasing prosperity, resulted in a rapidly growing amount of garbage Strasser, Garbage collected by private scavengers or municipal agencies was mixed with clean fill chemically inert solid materials, such as rocks, gravel, cinders, bricks, and concrete and used for the new land-making projects.
In a Newark newspaper reported admiringly that "New York rubbish is being turned into Jersey soil by scow after scow from Manhattan. The city of Newark started constructing Port Newark in , dredging a ship channel one mile long from Newark Bay into the Meadowlands. The city mixed the dredged fill with garbage and ashes and dumped it on the wetlands on the north side of the channel.
Eventually, the land was elevated several feet above sea level, and docks and warehouses were constructed on it Hallock, Additional portions of the Newark Meadows were similarly reclaimed during the s for the expansion of Port Newark and the construction of the original Newark Airport. These land-making projects elevated the wetlands by using a combination of fill: dredge spoils from Newark Bay, Newark garbage, and excavated fill from the construction of Newark's skyscrapers and subway system.
The Hackensack Meadows were not developed until much later than the Newark Meadows. The Hackensack Meadows were divided among many more municipalities, and none of these local governments had the resources to finance a major land-making project. Although construction of Teterboro Airport started during World War I, most of the development of the Hackensack Meadows came several decades later, and in much smaller increments than the giant construction projects of Port Newark and Newark Airport.
However, from the s through the s, more than half the acreage of the Meadowlands lying north of Newark Bay was filled in to make new upland Meadows Reclamation Commission, ; Mattson, ; Baldi, ; Sellnow, Large-scale proposals to develop the remaining Meadowlands arose in the s, after the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike along its eastern edge. Placement of a turnpike interchange at Route 3 in Secaucus began the transformation of a small village known primarily for its pig farms into a substantial city known for shopping malls and factory outlets.
Further incentive for developing the remaining portions of the Meadowlands came during the late s, when the New Jersey Turnpike Authority decided to widen the existing turnpike and construct a western spur through the very center of the wetlands to connect with Route 3 in East Rutherford, near the Hackensack River.
The administration of Governor Richard Hughes predicted that this interchange would become the center of a major new city on the reclaimed wetlands, with housing, industry, commercial centers, and recreation facilities rivaling those of Manhattan. Governor Hughes persuaded the legislature to enact the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Act in , to facilitate the development of the remaining Meadowlands.
His successor, William Cahill, persuaded the legislature to enact the New Jersey Sports Authority Act in , with the more focused mission of developing a major sports center at the intersection of the turnpike and Route 3 Ginman, ; Goldman, A dramatic change in public attitudes regarding the value of wetlands, along with new federal legislation in the early s mandating stricter criteria for water pollution and wetlands reclamation, slowed efforts to develop wetlands.
The election of Governor Brendan Byrne, who supported stricter state environmental laws and appointed more environmentally concerned commissioners to the HMDC, also slowed and then halted most efforts to develop the remaining Hackensack Meadowlands Goldman, ; Goldshore, The fourth major type of human impact was pollution—the import and deposit of refuse, sewage, and hazardous wastes in the Meadowlands.
In the 19th century, the southern portion of the Meadowlands began experiencing substantial pollution from the sewage and industrial wastes poured into the Passaic River. In the early s, Newark, Paterson, and other cities along the Passaic River collaborated to construct a major trunk sewer line to pump sewage into Newark Bay, and later New York Harbor. Department of Commerce, Coast and Geodetic Survey. The portion of the Meadowlands surrounding the Hackensack River initially experienced less pollution than the Passaic River section, largely because no large cities bordered that river.
But the mean range of tides in Newark Bay was 5. Twice each day, the waters and waterborne pollutants of Newark Bay would flow north into the Hackensack with a tidal current reaching 1. Department of Commerce, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Dredging of the Hackensack, which began in the early s, facilitated the entry of larger volumes of these increasingly polluted tidal waters. In much the same way that garbage from Newark had been used in the land-making projects that destroyed the Newark Meadows, starting in , New York City garbage was used to build up the five-square-mile portion of the Meadowlands between the mouths of the Passaic and Hackensack rivers.
Before then, New York City's garbage had either been dumped at sea or mixed with clean fill and used for land making at the tidal wetlands bordering lower Manhattan and the eastern shore of Brooklyn. Indeed, the precedent for using rubbish to create upland was such that "the present contours of virtually every portion of New York City and the neighboring parts of New Jersey and Long Island have all been shaped by fill, much of it garbage.
By the midth century, even garbage not being used for land-making projects was brought to the Meadowlands. It was simply deposited in open dumps, and later, in sanitary landfills.
The disposal of garbage in a manner that simply polluted and did nothing to make new land resulted from several factors. The most important factor was the growing population of New York City and adjacent municipalities, which generated ever-increasing amounts of garbage.
In , New York City stopped providing municipal garbage removal for commercial firms, which required companies to hire private garbage collectors. Some of these private haulers were associated with organized crime and chose to eliminate the expense of garbage dump "tipping fees" by simply depositing refuse at any available unwatched location. Its highway access to the city, as well as its low population density and corresponding difficulty of identifying illegal dumpers, made the northern portion of the Meadowlands attractive for unregulated garbage dumps.
The explosive growth of the local garbage-collection industry after —and corresponding increase in the frequency and quantity of illegal dumping in the Meadowlands—created a situation that might be called the Tony Soprano version of "the tragedy of the commons.
But when dozens of dumpers begin making a continuous round of trips to an ever-increasing number of illegal sites, they arouse the attention of local residents, newspaper reporters, law-enforcement officials, and eventually the local and state governments. As a consequence, when the New Jersey Legislature enacted the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Act in , one of the resulting commission's primary goals was the elimination of illegal dumping and the enforcement of regulations concerning legal dumping at the Meadowlands.
Changes in public attitudes regarding wetlands eventually led the commission to abandon its other original goal of actively promoting development and to strengthen its efforts to regulate garbage disposal New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, , Over the past several decades, shifts in people's attitudes about wetlands and the recognition that much of the remaining portions of the Newark and Hackensack meadows have suffered extensive environmental damage have led to studies regarding the extent of the damage and possible means to remediate it.
As a result, the commission and the affiliated Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute has become a major sponsor of wetlands environmental research Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute, During the years before the creation of the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission, the Newark and Hackensack meadows experienced several important changes as the result of human use and alteration.
The first years of relatively benign extraction of natural resources was superseded by more drastic changes starting in the early s. The steady decrease of fresh river water flowing into the Meadowlands and the later dredging of the river bottoms combined with a rising sea level to increase the salinity of the Meadowlands' waters.
Initial land-reclamation efforts with dikes and drains, and later land-making efforts using dredging and filling, transformed more than two-thirds of the Meadowlands' square miles into elevated upland.
In their seminal book Life and Death of the Salt Marsh , John and Mildred Teal noted, "The closer the marsh lay to New York City, the more likely it was that it was destroyed by the spreading urban complex. The development of the Newark and Hackensack meadows was a minor variation on this theme: They were close to New York City, but even closer to Newark.
The southern portion of the Meadowlands, comprising the former Newark Meadows and the five-square-mile portion of the Hackensack Meadows lying between Newark Bay and the PATH rapid-transit train lines, was completely developed and excluded from the jurisdiction of the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Act.
The pattern of extraction, alteration, development, and pollution of the Newark and Hackensack meadows might also be useful for understanding the history of other degraded wetlands in the New York City area, as well as ones near Boston, San Francisco, and other urban centers. Stan Hales of the U. Day and Gene Nieminen of the U.
Fish and Wildlife Service provided a digital copy of the map; and the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission and the Regional Plan Association granted permission to display maps prepared by their staff.
Artigas, F. Hyperspectral remote sensing of habitat heterogeneity between tide-restricted and tide-open areas in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Urban Habitats, 2. Baldi, B. The Hackensack Meadowlands: A natural and unnatural History. Barron, H.
Mixed harvest: The second great transformation in the rural north, — Boldt, O. Intergovernmental relations and urban development policy: the politics of the Hackensack Meadowlands legislation.
Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York. Bower, B. Waste management: Generation and disposal of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste in the New York region. New York: Regional Plan Association. Brooks, J. Latin: Oxyura jamaicensis. Pledge to stand with Audubon to call on elected officials to listen to science and work towards climate solutions.
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With the advent of the Clean Water Act in , wiser environmental regulations began to slowly correct past errors. After decades of struggle by activists and political leaders in the Meadowlands, a new Master Plan for conservation and proper development was agreed upon in by government policymakers, environmental advocates and business people. Today it is being implemented by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, the planning and zoning authority for the region, and is complemented by better land use policy elsewhere in the watershed, putting an emphasis on habitat preservation.
As anyone can now discover, the Meadowlands is home to 64 species of breeding birds including Threatened and Endangered species like Northern Harrier, Yellow-crowned Night-Heron and Osprey. An additional bird species, including Bald Eagles, utilize the Meadowlands as a migratory stopover or as overwintering habitat. It provides essential habitat for one or more species of birds that make a significant contribution to the long-term viability of native avian populations in New Jersey.
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