Some 1.5 million people (who do NOT live in Hunterdon county) depend on water from the Raritan that essentially comes from the Hunterdon (and Morris) County headwaters of the South Branch into Spruce Run Reservoir, with the North Branch (Rockaway Creek) playing a role as well. The quality and quantity of the water is dependent on the quality of the land cover in the watershed. As you know, forested land provides the best recharge. The more impervious cover, the less the recharge. A 1994 report "Drinking Waters at Risk" by Environmental Defense and NJPIRG, reported that a Maryland study found that "stream water quality declines significantly when impervious surface exceeded 12%." Reservoir systems are much more susceptible to eutrophication, In North Carolina, expert studies of one reservoir system recommended that the watershed be preserved at no more than 4% impervious cover. The ordinance that ultimately resulted from that report imposed a sliding scale on impervious cover limits on all development from 12% to 4%; however, all new lots, had to meet the 4% requirement.

The EDF/NJPIRG report continues: To provide some perspective on what these impervious cover limits mean, NJDEP has done a groundwater study applying standard estimates of the impervious cover that results from different kinds of zoning. For 1 and 2 acre lots, the impervious cover is 17%; for 1/4 acre lots it is 65%; and for landscaped commercial or industrial ares, the impervious cover is 85% to 100%. The 4% impervious cover limitation would therefore allow an average of more than one unit over eight acres.

In the northern part of the Highlands, for example, the Newark water supply, where Newark owns some 35,000 acres of undeveloped forested watershed land, provides the best quality water. On the other hand, the Wanaque Reservoir System, the (state's?) largest system, supplying water to 1.6 million people, where only the land directly around the reservoir is protected, has water quality problems, and was called "threatened" in the 1993 U.S. Forest Service study of the Highlands.

The fractured rock aquifers that supply wells in the Highlands have only a limited capacity. The amount of water in this area has not been well studied at this point. In Morris County, it is known that groundwater withdrawals are currently exceeding the recharge rate. I believe we have heard of wells going dry or decreasing in level in Hunterdon County, esp. in the drought last year, when there were large demands by adjacent wells.