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.

CAMDEN, NJ—Heavy rainfall, runoff, urban flooding, overbank flooding and drainage problems threaten several areas in Camden County, but the City of Camden—one of 37 municipalities in the county—has the greatest number of residents living in a floodplain. Like a peninsula, water surrounds the city, such as the Delaware River, Cooper River and Newton Creek. But residents aren't just taking in floodwater. There's raw sewage in the mix. As an overburdened Black and brown community with about 36% of residents living below the poverty level, residents, environmental specialists and community nonprofits say it's an environmental justice issue.

"More affluent suburbs of Camden County, just a few miles away, don't have this flooding problem," said Scott Schreiber, the Executive Director of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA). "And if they did, there would be such a, you know, reaction if there was combined sewage in folks' streets. But my sense of it is that it would be something that's dealt with quickly."

Combined Sewage Overflows (CSOs) have been a persistent problem in Camden for decades. A bygone system that fails to meet the water quality standards under the Clean Water Act, a CSO system transports sewage, industrial waste and urban runoff together to a wastewater treatment plant. If the volume of wastewater exceeds the system's capacity, the untreated sewage and stormwater discharges directly into waterways—and can overflow into streets and people's homes. 

In overburdened communities like Camden, where about 43% of the population is Black/African American and 53% Hispanic/Latino, people of color and households below the poverty line disproportionately bear environmental hazards, affecting their quality of life. The state recognizes overburdened communities as majority marginalized, low-income, tribal, or indigenous populations that experience disproportionate environmental harms and risks.

And like other overburdened communities such as Newark and Paterson, it's the same issue: every time it rains, it floods. As rainfalls become heavier, Cramer Hill residents have said that flooding has increased within the last decade, so they don’t just flood during tropical storms but regular rain events. 

Although not every overflow may result in street flooding, sewage overflows in Camden occur almost 69 times a year, similar to Paterson and Newark, which experience overflows 70 and 61 times a year, respectively.

“Personally, as a Camden resident, someone that grew up in the city and realized the importance of creating an environment where people want to live, work and play, your zip code should not also determine what the quality of the environment is that you live in,” Meishka Mitchell, the former Vice President of Neighborhood Initiatives at the Cooper’s Ferry Partnership—a community nonprofit now known as the Camden Community Partnership—told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2016.

The EPA requires municipalities with CSOs to develop a Long-Term Control Plan (LTCP) to eliminate or reduce discharges and comply with the Clean Water Act. Although still under review by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Schreiber said they’re working on a two-part stormwater project in Cramer Hill.

Using FEMA funding, the Harrison Avenue stormwater infrastructure and complete street project will capture and mitigate flooding along Harrison Avenue and State Street, a primary route that connects Cramer Hill and North Camden—two of Camden’s most densely populated neighborhoods—and a flooding hotspot triggered by as little as 0.3 inches of rain. Redesigning Harrison Avenue is one of the top requests in the Cramer Hill Neighborhood Plan.

Not only will the project make stormwater infrastructure improvements on Harrison Avenue to help mitigate flooding for a 10-year storm—a storm that has a 10% chance of happening in any year—with green infrastructure and gray infrastructure, such as subsurface or underground water storage, but it will fulfill Harrison Avenue’s role in the Camden GreenWay, a regional system of bikeways and trails, by increasing pedestrian access with bike routes and sidewalks.  

Pino Rodriguez, a Camden resident who founded the Camden Block Supporter Initiative to transform his neighborhood for a better quality of life, told the EPA that there's a disparity problem. Some people outside of urban areas see a green street and don't think twice about the trees, benches and flower boxes. "You say, what's the big deal, this is what I see in my neighborhood?" said Rodriguez. "Well, that's exactly the point. That's what we want you to see—normality. What people deserve is just a normal, regular life, right? But to other people, they see this as something special."

The issue is that green spaces aren’t common in economically marginalized and racialized urban areas. Meredith Pichini, the program director of the Urban Airshed Reforestation Program in Camden at the NJ Tree Foundation (NJTF), said residents often contact NJTF requesting trees for their blocks and schools, which can beautify their neighborhoods, absorb stormwater and act as a cooling mechanism as temperatures rise.

“That's when we'll bring in the trees, we'll see what kind of trees do they want, what do they envision?” she said. “So really, it's the residents that take onus of the projects. They maintain the trees after they're planted. And it should be resident-led. Especially with environmental justice concerns.”

While green infrastructure is an essential stormwater management tool that can protect the environment and improve public health, livability and quality of life in Black and brown communities—reducing runoff, flooding, temperature and air pollution—as climate change worsens and storms intensify it will be less directly effective than gray infrastructure. Severe storms need more acres to absorb more volume, and as the water table rises, each acre will be less effective. It’s likely that gray infrastructure will have to do more labor in the future—so upgrading and building gray infrastructure is just as important.

“I think the biggest thing would be ultimately to replace the sewer system in Camden,” said Pichini. “Finally upgrade it. Separate the storm sewer system.”  

CMMUA is working with American Water, a public utility company that owns and operates Camden’s water and sewer systems, to clean the stormwater pipes in the city, removing silt and debris to allow for more capacity. They also improved their wastewater treatment plant by increasing capacity from 150 million gallons per day to 185 million gallons per day. In addition, Schreiber said they did a sewer separation project that allowed flow from one part of Camden to go directly to the wastewater treatment plant instead of competing with the flow from the rest of the county.

"That's had a remarkable impact on the downtown area of Camden," said Schreiber. "Where they used to flood a couple of times a month. Now we're down to like, one time a year, maybe."

Pichini said she noticed less flooding after they cleaned the sewer system, but it's a temporary solution. Even with green infrastructure and flood mitigation projects underway, Pichini said smaller neighborhoods in the middle of Camden tend to be under-invested. Some communities are still flooding minutes after it rains, and even after the LTCP is approved, several projects in the plan can take years to get underway, and one of the major challenges for overburdened or environmental justice communities is that they need more funding.

Funding Blocks 

Andy Kricun, the former Executive Director and Chief Engineer of CCMUA for 35 years, said progress has slowed in recent years. "The long-term control plan is supposed to finish in 2025, and I think it's up to 2040," he said. Kricun has served on New Jersey's Environmental Justice Advisory Council for seven years and on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council since 2021. He said the slower pace is likely due to funding issues and, by extension, some political resistance.

Elected officials are usually more concerned about the 36 suburban towns who would likely be opposed to spending any money on Camden, he said, since mitigating sewage overflows and flooding is ultimately Camden's legal responsibility, not the CCMUA's. But since Camden lacks the funds to make improvements, they must spread the projects and funds out over more time to prevent raising rates too high and too fast.

“There are two sides of the environmental justice coin, as I see it: on the one hand, every person deserves safe drinking water and clean waterways, but they also deserve it at an affordable rate,” said Kricun. “There's a sort of a false choice between providing the services or sinking the ships of people who can't afford the water bill.”

But the start of preventing sewage overflows and flooding through gray and green infrastructure in Camden dates back before the LTCP was required in New Jersey—although it wasn't without its challenges. 

"I would see kids walking through puddles to get to their bus stop after a rain and knowing that those puddles weren't just rainwater but combined sewage," Kricun said, so tackling the issue from both a social justice and public health standpoint for Black and brown communities meant identifying multifaceted projects—that served multiple needs of the community alongside stormwater management—and a means to fund them.

The CCMUA founded a partnership called Camden SMART, a stormwater management and resource training initiative to do this. One of the initiative's main goals was to develop a comprehensive network of green infrastructure projects in Camden, resulting in over 60 green infrastructure installations around the city designed to capture around 64.6 million gallons of stormwater annually. 

They partnered with Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program, NJTF, Cooper's Ferry Partnership—now the Camden Community Partnership—and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), along with Camden residents and community organizations. So, while Rutgers helped design rain gardens, the NJTF helped identify suitable trees and community organizations and nonprofits such as Cooper's Ferry helped make community connections and ensure the community's wishes were included when selecting and developing projects.

Kricun said the partnership initiative was so unique because the CCMUA and NJDEP—a wastewater utility and state regulator—were full-fledged partners. The old-school approach was to stay under the radar and do what you're obliged to do, nothing more. "The part of the regulators is to regulate. Compliance. Instead, [the NJDEP] were proactively working with us to help solve the problems," he said. 

The City of Camden was also a nominal partner. "They said we have no resources, we can't provide person-power or funds, but if you're beautifying our city and helping our city, we'll be at every groundbreaking and ribbon cutting, and we'll support it," said Kricun.

Although CCMUA used the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) 90% of the time—a federal-state partnership that provides low-cost financing for water quality infrastructure projects—partners would pitch in as well by pooling their eligibility. For example, Kricun said one project in Cramer Hill was funded partly through the State Revolving Fund but also because Rutgers and Cooper’s Ferry could qualify for funding as a university and a non-profit that CCMUA couldn’t. 

"We didn't do that often, we did do that from time to time, and we could have done more of it. It's just that the nonprofits have less capacity," he said. One of the goals of the partnership was to prevent low-income households from getting less services than they're entitled to and at rates they can't afford, so they implemented the projects themselves.

"But if they couldn't help with the funding, they'd help with person power,” Kricun added. “They would be out there, talking to the community, because this was not our area of expertise. It was truly a team effort."

By 2020, the partnership was able to complete about two-thirds or three-quarters of the LTCP. "What was important was I never went to the politicians and said, ‘This is what I want to do for Camden. And we're going to have to raise the rates by this much,’" he said. "I always said, ‘This is what we want to do. And we could do it without raising rates.’"

The fact that it could be done without raising rates reduced a lot of angst, and although not an easy task, Kricun believes the remainder of the LTCP could be done faster if CCMUA would pick up the tab as it has in the past.

One of the key reasons CCMUA successfully implemented projects was that, as a county wastewater utility, they could fund projects throughout the whole county, not just the City of Camden. The State Revolving Fund offers loans at such a low interest, Kricun said it was almost like a grant. With a 30-year loan at 1% interest at the county level, the annual debt service is low and can spread over time and a larger population with a minimal rate impact. If the City of Camden must work alone, it will take them longer to afford it with fewer ratepayers and as a low-wealth community.

Kricun said that other wastewater utilities in New Jersey, like the Passaic Valley Sewer Commission (PVSC), could do a lot more if they wanted to make a huge difference for EJ communities. “A regional authority that has obligations but also is allowed to do more,” he explained.

“I would urge them to try to be more of an anchor institution because they can make a huge difference,” he added. “I'm not saying they don't do what they're obliged to do. My sense is they're not doing a lot more than what they're obliged to do.”

Going green before the LTCP

One of CCMUA's goals was to be an anchor institution in the community. To be invested in people's quality of life instead of just checking off a box or trying to meet a permit. An alternative approach would be to see compliance as the floor, not the ceiling of aspirations. "The way I look at that is legally, you have to stay within your lane. How can we do the most that we can and still stay in our legal lane? That's where green infrastructure came in."

Looking to Philadelphia after being directed by the EPA on where to find out more about green infrastructure, the CCMUA saw a way to widen its lane since. While falling into what the CCMUA was allowed to do through stormwater management, it enabled them to green the city, provide public space and create green jobs to maintain those spaces.

"And I think we went beyond Philadelphia in some respects," said Kricun. Not in scope or volume but given that Philadelphia is under a consent agreement with the EPA that requires them to reduce CSOs and build green spaces. "They themselves have acknowledged that they're not necessarily looking at equity and where to put the green spaces,” he said.

Meaning it's more about compliance. In Camden, several partnership projects were brownfield remediations, turning an abandoned and polluted industrial lot into a green space. Currently, there are over 8,100 vacant lots in Camden and 15% of buildings in Camden are abandoned. These lots can contribute to excess stormwater runoff and pose an environmental and public health hazard, yet they are also important assets that can provide more green space and, in turn, manage stormwater, reduce flooding and revitalize neighborhoods.

Kricun said one of their brownfield remediation projects was named one of the 10 best uses of the State Revolving Fund across the country by The Environmental Council of the States (ECOS). They converted a brownfield on the riverfront with an abandoned factory into a riverfront park. The site was contaminated with chemicals and radioactive materials. CCMUA was able to get an open space grant from the county to purchase the property and used the State Revolving Fund to demolish the factory, remove the contaminated soil and put in a clean soil cap.

Not only does the park help retain stormwater and mitigate flooding, but the project removed an eye sore and environmental and public health hazard while providing a park for the community so they have access to the riverfront. But the nexus was stormwater. “You're getting multiple wins,” said Kricun. “You're eliminating a brownfield that could be injurious to public health. Runoff from a brownfield can go right into the river. And these are things we weren't obliged to do. But we were allowed to do them because of the stormwater nexus.”

One project the initiative copied directly from Philadelphia, though, was their PowerCorps Camden Program. A six-month program that trains and hires Camden County residents between 18 to 26 to maintain green spaces. “Philadelphia started it. We copied it. Buffalo copied it from us,” said Kricun. “Same idea. Its nexus is stormwater, which makes it allowable. So you're staying in your legal lane, but you're widening it.”

The CCMUA launched an initiative that would inspire a statewide program: the Camden Collaborative Initiative—born out of Camden SMART. "The Camden Collaborative Initiative is a group of about 70 or 80 different entities that all work together to try to find solutions for Camden's environmental problems," said Schreiber. Governmental, environmental and community leaders and organizations work on flooding, sewage overflow, brownfield redevelopment, air emissions, climate resilience, illegal dumping, and health and environmental education. 

The collaborative was so successful that the state launched a statewide Community Collaborative Initiative (CCI) that expanded into 12 other EJ communities, such as Trenton, Jersey City, Newark and Paterson. Within the CCI, the NJDEP is supposed to be a proactive partner of local governments and community-based groups to focus on environmental quality and sustainability, economic development, and resilient community development and revitalization. Although Paterson has seen little progress in improving flooding and sewage overflows, leaving residents frustrated.   

"There's a very big gap between what you're obliged to do and what you're allowed to do," Kricun said. "So for each utility, where they fall in that continuum, it's going make a big difference as to the amount of benefit that the community gets from the program because there's a certain amount you must do, but there's a lot more that you can do if you strive to do it."