Clean Ocean Action at the Coastal Lakes Summit

Clean Ocean Action was invited by Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute to participate in the Coastal Lakes Summit on March 15.  The summit brought together representatives of communities working to address the environmental problems being faced by six coastal lakes in Monmouth County (Deal Lake, Lake Como, Sunset Lake, Sylvan Lake, Takanessee Lake, and Wesley Lake).  COA’s Alison McCarthy, Coastal Watershed Protection Coordinator, and Dr. Swarna Muthukrishnan, Staff Scientist, attended the day-long summit.  COA has an ongoing collaboration with Deal Lake Commission and Deal Lake Watershed Alliance for microbial source track down.

The focus of the summit was to engage and promote citizen science partnership through a new Coastal Lakes Observing Network (CLONet) under UCI to monitor the conditions of these six lakes and share the data to an online database.  CLONet will help provide water quality and nutrient monitoring kits, and facilitate citizen science monitoring of these lakes. More than 100 representatives including NJDEP, Lake Commissions, and nonprofit groups attended the summit.