In 1994, the Sussex County Board of Chosen Freeholders designated the SCMUA as the lead agency for the proposed Wallkill River Watershed Management Plan. Finally, in March 2000, after 6 years of work developing a Scope of Work, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection awarded a grant to the SCMUA to develop and implement a the Wallkill River Watershed Management Project. Since then, a stakeholder comprised Public Advisory Committee / Group, a Coordinating Committee, and three work committees (Education and Outreach, Land Use, and Technical Advisory) have helped facilitate a watershed management program which has effectively generated public participation, raised awareness, developed GIS mapping capabilities, and instituted a NJDEP Quality Assurance/Quality Control surface water chemical sampling program which has led to the collection of water quality data at a total of 12 sites on four different surface waters from the Wallkill Basin. The data collected during 2002 and 2003 through the unique stakeholder partnership of the SCMUA, the NJDEP, the Sussex County, Vernon, and Sparta Township Health Departments has led to the removal of the Wallkill River from the NJDEP’s 2004 Integrated List of Impaired Surface Waters for total phosphorus, at two locations, in Sparta Township and Franklin Borough. In addition, the SCMUA and the Wallkill River Watershed Management Project has just recently been awarded the 2004 Community Outreach Wave Award by the Association of Environmental Authorities in recognition of all the work that has been done through the Project to insure the restoration, maintenance, and enhancement of the watershed.

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