Woodbridge Wins $28K EPA Grant to Teach Students About Pollution in Keasbey

Woodbridge just won an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) award to teach students from the township's three high schools about the causes of pollution along the Raritan River - particularly about that may someday be turned into a riverside oasis.

The $27,800 grant is to be used for the "Woodbridge Township Wetlands Restoration Education Project," according to an EPA press release. The money is to be devoted to educational activities at the old Nuodex site in the Keasbey section of the township, an area which Mayor John McCormac is hoping to turn into a waterfront park.

Just last week, the township announced yet again that will be located on the site. 

It's the same area where Woodbridge volunteered to have trucked from Bound Brook as landfill in March. The NJ Department of Environmental Protection had fought for years to get the contaminated soil away from the Raritan River in Bound Brook, only to have it moved downriver to the Keasbey Superfund site.

"EPA is proud to provide support to the Woodbridge, NJ community in their efforts to educate high school students about the need to clean up the Raritan River,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator about the grant.

The grant money is to be used to conduct "seminars, field trips and family science nights will focus on the “El Paso site” and other wetland and Brownfields sites along the Raritan River," the EPA statement said.

"The project is designed to increase community understanding of the causes of pollution, how to prevent it, and the kinds of stewardship projects and programs that can be implemented."