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[Today's News]forgotten waterway

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Thursday, August 7, 1997

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Stories By JULIE FIELDS

News Staff Writer

Briefs From the back door of her

The Region oyster-colored split-level home in the

Montclair Heights section of Clifton,

Business Alice Maicki can look across a swimming

pool and patio to a row of trees lining

The Wire a gurgling brook.

Columnists

For eight years, Maicki has known the

stream was there. But because it never

Obituaries overran its banks, she gave it little

thought.

Education

"I have no idea where it starts or

Campaign where it ends," Maicki said recently.

Central "It was never a threat to me, so I

didn't have to find out."

[Your Town] Maicki's unfamiliarity with the Third

River is not unusual.

[Sports News]

The discovery of pearls -- produced by

freshwater mussels -- brought fame to

[OnLife] the tributary shortly before the Civil

War. But the brook largely has fallen

[Opinion] into obscurity, and the lyrical name

given to it by fortune hunters, Pearl

Brook, has been replaced by one devised

[Special Reporby cartographers.

[Interact withNow there is a renewed interest. Using

a $15,000 grant from the state, the

city's Environmental Protective

Commission and Health Department are

launching a two-year study of pollution

and life in the waterway. The aim is to

assess water quality and identify

sources of contamination, whether

industrial, household, or highway.

From its beginning as a trickle on

Garret Mountain, the Third River weaves

briefly through West Paterson and

Little Falls and then into Clifton,

Montclair, Bloomfield, Belleville, and

back into Clifton's Delawanna section

before emptying into the Passaic River.

Along its 11-mile course, the river

slides past a cross section of North

Jersey landscapes: suburban back yards,

abandoned factories, and a tiny refuge

for birds and wildlife.

Portions of the river are hidden,

encased in concrete culverts.

Elsewhere, it runs beneath highways --

the Garden State Parkway, Route 3, and

Route 46 -- obscured by vegetation and

sound walls. In other spots, such as

Kingsland and Booth parks in Nutley, it

is accessible to the public.

As an urban stream, the river is

polluted by storm drains carrying

garden fertilizers and oily runoff from

thousands of cars. Yet anecdotes from

its past describe a time when the water

was clean enough to support fish and

freshwater mussels.

Today, little is known about the

river's health. Or, as Maicki can

attest, about the presence of the

stream itself.

But those studying the stream hope to

change that.

Once the analysis is complete, the

commission will be able to measure

future improvements or declines in

water quality, said Joseph A. Labriola,

an environmental biologist and a member

of the commission.

Some residents, however, doubt that

much can be done to improve the stream.

"You have 120,000 cars on this highway

passing by every day. You have gas

stations and cooking [along the

highway]. What can you expect from the

water?" asked Stanley John Lacz, whose

office and home on Notch Road in Little

Falls are adjacent to the brook and

Route 46 west.

State environmental officials also hope

to use Clifton's study in developing a

broader watershed management plan for

the Passaic River. As a major conduit

of storm runoff, the Third River

funnels pollution from its

12-square-mile watershed into the

Passaic.

The stream was named the Third River

because it lies north of two other

tributaries to the Passaic River. The

Second River runs through Bloomfield

and Belleville, along the border with

Newark, before joining the Passaic. The

ÊFirst River ran through what is now

Branch Brook Park and was used to Ê

operate grist mills for Newark's first

settlers in the late 1600s. It was

later paved over.

Clifton's study, expected to begin this

fall, will be conducted by scientists

from Fairleigh Dickinson University,

assisted by interns from Rutgers and

Montclair State universities, said

Albert Greco, director of Clifton's

Health Department.

As a first step, Labriola hopes to walk

the length of the brook. Interns will

then collect samples of water and mud

from the stream bed. The tiny organisms

that live in the mud are "like the coal

miner's canary," providing a barometer

of the river's health, said Edward

Catanzaro, a geochemist and past

chairman of the Department of Chemistry

at Fairleigh Dickinson. Catanzaro plans

to work on the study.

"They will tell you how clean or

unclean the water is. They're more

sensitive than fish would be," he

added.

In addition to assessing water quality,

the commission plans to use the grant

to raise awareness of the importance of

urban streams, and the damage caused by

dumping oil, gasoline, and other

chemicals into storm drains.

Besides providing flood protection,

brooks such as the Third River support

a canopy of greenery. Trees along the

brook include the dappled American

sycamore, the non-native Norway maple,

the American elm, and the white ash.

The Alonzo F. Bonsal Wildlife Preserve

in Montclair, just over the Clifton

border, holds the richest concentration

of wildlife along the Third River.

Created in the 1960s to prevent

development along the brook, the

preserve is home to Baltimore orioles,

red-eyed vireos, wood thrushes,

red-winged blackbirds, robins, song

sparrows, and goldfinches.

Although the preserve is not entirely

secluded -- a radio tower and power

lines are visible from a bend in the

stream -- it remains, for the most

part, wild.

"It gives us an idea of what it was

like here before all these houses moved

in with the manicured lawns and

gardens," said Marie Kuhnen, a retired

professor of botany at Montclair State

University. She lobbied for the

preserve's creation.

Kuhnen, who has lived within walking

distance of the preserve since 1955,

believes she has witnessed a

decades-long deterioration in the

brook. Although birds are abundant in

the preserve, the frogs, crayfish,

salamanders, and mussels Kuhnen once

saw are mostly gone.

And, further back, before the Great

Notch Reservoir in West Paterson

interrupted the river's course in 1899,

its flow was much stronger. "It's just

a vestige of itself now," Labriola

said.

While it may be little noticed today,

the Third River gained brief but

widespread fame more than a century ago

when Great Notch was considered a

wilderness.

In 1857, a cobbler from Paterson, David

Howell, traveled to the brook to gather

freshwater mussels. After frying them,

he discovered a huge pearl weighing 400

grains, about an ounce, according to

The Book of the Pearl, which was

written by George Frederick Kunz and

Charles Hugh Stevenson and published in

1908.

In the same year, a large pink pearl

was discovered by Jacob Quackenbush and

sold to Tiffany & Co. for $1,500,

according to the book.

Word of the discovery spread throughout

New York and New Jersey, triggering a

rush of fortune seekers scouring the

stream for mussels.

"With trousers rolled up, the people

waded into the shallow water and sought

for the mussels in the mud and sand.

.Ê.Ê. Many pearls were secured, but

none approached in size or market value

the two above noted," according to the

account in Kunz and Stevenson's book.

But the boom was short-lived: Within a

few years, few mussels were left.