The Restoration of an Urban Floodplain in Rahway, New Jersey

Abstract

The highly urbanized Rahway River watershed in New Jersey suffers from frequent flooding due to extensive development and destruction of riparian wetlands and floodplains. A diverse group of stakeholders worked together to restore a 1.8 ha site on the floodplain to riparian wetland with the goals of providing wildlife habitat, filtering pollutants from storm-water runoff, providing stormwater retention to minimize flooding, and providing public access for passive recreation as well as education about wetlands and watershed management. This wetland restoration site has been incorporated into the Union County Parks System as the Michael S. Bezega Wetlands Observation Area. Due to the urban setting (14 houses were removed from the site), the project design and implementation were very complex. Developing the water budgets required analyses of the tidal Rahway River as well as stormwater runoff from local drainage areas. Funding was obtained from six different funding agencies, and the project was constructed largely with city and county public works personnel. Native plants were installed by volunteers who continue to do invasive species management at the site. Key factors contributing to the success of this project include extensive involvement of a diverse partnership of stakeholders, a multi-disciplinary project team, thorough up-front design and engineering analyses, careful selection of vegetation palettes based on analyses of reference wetlands, and extensive on-site supervision of the construction crews by personnel who could make design decisions in the field.