Historic brook gets a good cleaning

Residents from Glen Ridge and surrounding towns removed debris from Toney’s Brook and the surrounding area on Saturday, Oct. 21.

This was accomplished for the semi-annual Clean Ocean Action Beach Sweeps, a statewide environmental project with most activity along the Jersey Shore.

According to the Beach Sweeps website, 70 communities joined this year. A call to the Beach Sweeps media office determined that four to six of those 70 communities, like Glen Ridge, were inland, but had waterways that went to sea.

Land locked or not, the environmental undertaking is a small but steadfast event in Glen Ridge and Toney’s Brook, a tributary to the Second and Passaic rivers, is the better for it.

Scouts, high school clubs, sports team members, parents with kids, come out dressed to wade and retrieve beer cans or chance their footing and the current. Although it remains a picturesque waterway, in the 1800s, Toney’s Brook was a relatively important source of commerce. According to a Glen Ridge Bicentennial publication, Glen Ridge Heritage, the brook could at one time deliver 50-75 horsepower, supporting five mills along its banks.

Communities that signed on with Beach Sweeps receive volunteer data cards to fill out. This documentation is important paperwork because it requests an accounting of the types of litter removed. The litter is categorized: balloons and rubber; metal; personal protective equipment; paper, cloth, wood, glass, plastics and foam plastic. This information is eventually passed to the source businesses of the found material in the hope that a potential way to decrease litter might ensue.

About 13 people signed up to scout out Glenfield Park on Saturday; 18 came to the Glen. Borough resident Eric Hanan was in charge at the park. At the Glen, Glen Ridge Department of Public Works Director Bill Bartlett was on duty with Chris Johnson, a DPW maintenance worker.

According to Bartlett and Johnson, volunteers came back with the usual bottles, cans and styrofoam, but there was also a discarded car battery and for the topper, the bottom half of a garage door.

Bartlett, a 30-year veteran of the DPW, recalled the days when a gun and knife were found.

But they said Beach Sweep events are only the tip of the garbage berg.

Johnson, whose spring and summertime duties include mowing the Glen twice a week during the spring and once a week during the summer, said he collects two bags of garbage every time before he cuts the grass.

Passing motorists, Bartlett said, will just toss litter out the window as they drive by.

  Glen Ridge, Toney’s Brook