Countdown to 1.5 Episode 5 – ‘Time for Green Infrastructure’

Local Activists’ take on stormwater management Pt. 3

Welcome to the fourth episode of "Countdown to 1.5," a podcast about the environmental justice movement. For this audio report, Public Square's engagement editor, Esther Paul, spoke to Andrew Kricun, former director and chief engineer of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA).

This story was produced as part of the Northern New Jersey Media Collaborative Project "Stormwater Matters," a project focusing on stormwater management solutions in the state.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Welcome to the ‘Countdown to 1.5,’ a podcast that zooms into the impact of global warming at the community level. I'm your host, Esther Paul. In this final episode, we conclude this three-part series on green infrastructure and local activists’ take on stormwater management. In part one, we spoke to Nicole Miller, co-chair of Newark DIG, and in part two we heard from Martha Arencibia, community activist and former co-chair of the Paterson Green Team.

Their teams, along with the third we’ll learn about today are part of overburdened communities pushing their municipalities to mitigate flooding. Today we’ll hear from Andrew Kricun, former director and chief engineer of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA).

Thank you for joining the conversation Andrew. Can you tell us what the CCMUA is?

Andre Kricun: The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority is a regional wastewater authority that services all of Camden County's 37 municipalities, including the city of Camden, which has a combined sewer system, but also the other 36 suburban towns as well.

Narrator: Did you work with other organizations to accomplish your goals? And how important were they?

Kricun: Yes, we did. And it was very important because there was three kinds of things that we could do to help improve the situation. One thing we could do is make our wastewater treatment plant bigger so that we could handle more sewage flow when it rained. A second thing we could do is to make Camden’s pipes bigger, so they could send more flow to the plant and a third thing that we could do, which is where a lot of the community engagement came into play, was that we could also de-pave the city because the reason that the stormwater problem was so big, not just in Camden, but also all the combined sewer communities across the country is that they put these combined sewers in before the advent of the automobile. So most, most of the rainwater just soak into the ground, but then they paved everything over and then all the stormwater had no place to go because it would hit the sidewalk and the street. And so what we want, a solution which we borrowed from our neighbors in the city of Philadelphia, is to unpave it, you know, and, and to create more green spaces for the community. So it's a win win. It's a functional purpose of soaking up stormwater. But it also provides an opportunity to make the city greener, and to provide riverfront access. So the wastewater utility, that's not like the, that's not what we're good at, you know, we're good at pipes and treatment. So creating green spaces was something that we thought was the right thing to do, but we didn't have a lot of experience. So we engaged, four main partners, the state of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Rutgers, which is the State University because they were able to design the rain gardens, New Jersey Tree Foundation, because they could identify the best kinds of trees that would be suitable for Camden. And then we also worked with the Cooper's Ferry Partnership, because we wanted to make sure that we were gonna do this in the communities. Let's do it in a way that benefits the community the most. And then the last thing we did was we partnered with with AmeriCorps, the idea was to try to do as much good for the city. We again borrowed from Philadelphia and contacted AmeriCorps and got funding so that we could we could hire young men and women from Camden City, aged 18 to 26. and train them with Rutgers help to maintain all these new green spaces. So it's really a win win. You've got, soaking up the stormwater that's the functionality, you're creating a park or Rain Garden Park or the Riverfront Park for the community, and then now you're creating green jobs for the residents. Collectively we call ourselves the Camden SMART team, which SMART was Stormwater Management and Resource Training.

Narrator: And what would you say was one of your most successful projects?

Kricun: One favorite is the Power Corps that the green jobs program from the time that we started out in 2013 until 2020, I think, close to 400 young men and women got jobs, paid jobs. And the way it worked was they would be paid for 40 hours a week and then maybe work say 30 hours a week, like restoring the parks and the green spaces, and then the other ten hours, they would get life skills training, and then they got job placement and then a new cohort would come in every six months. So that was just really rewarding because we had about 50 to 60% job placement, which is pretty good considering for all of them, it was their first job. I think our best rain garden project was an abandoned factory that was polluted and had radioactive soil. It was only about a quarter of a mile away from an elementary school in the waterfront south portion of Camden plus a neighborhood. We were able to get open space grant money to buy the property, and then got funding to demolish the factory, remove the contaminated soil and cap it and create a riverfront park so that the residents could actually walk from their neighborhood and see a sunset on the Delaware. So instead of having contaminated runoff, going into the river and also being a risk to the school and neighborhood, we were able to create a riverfront park for the neighbors.

Narrator: How does environmental justice play into improving stormwater management in Camden and New Jersey?

Kricun: There's two kinds of communities in New Jersey, there's the ones with the combined sewers. And then there's the ones which are separate sewers. So in general, flooding is a problem and flooding, even if you have a separate sewer, you know flooding tends to be a problem for lower income people because they're in lower lying areas. So it's a tremendous environmental justice issue because my definition of abandoned justice is that where you live, or who you are, or how much money you make, should not determine what your quality of life should be. And nobody should have to worry about, “Oh, no, it's raining tonight, I’m going to have sewage backing up in my basement or sewage in the streets where my kids walk to get to the school bus.”

Narrator: Do you think other water or wastewater utilities, like CCMUA in New Jersey can do more for EJ communities?

Kricun: Yes, I do. I definitely do. I believe that, you know, public sector entities like the wastewater utilities are supposed to be public servants. And more often than not, they are located in lower income communities like Camden or Paterson or Newark. So I think it is really incumbent on our wastewater utilities to serve as anchor institutions to strive for environmental justice, to reduce the burdens for the people that they're serving.

Narrator: Well thank you for joining us and helping us to close off this series Andrew. Although this is the last episode in this series, PSA will continue to shed a light on the role of local community activists, green infrastructure, and stormwater management. Until next time, this is your host, Esther, signing off. On behalf of everyone here at Public Square Amplified, thanks for checking out the countdown to 1.5 podcast.

Credits

Music:

 “Rise and Shine” by Audiobinger is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

“State of Mind” by Audiobinger is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Produced by Esther Paul