Sloatsburg’s Geoff Welch was the subject of a recent LoHud feature on the area’s important waterways, part of an on-going series.
The Ramapo River winds through these parts, a small river by many standards, but very important to the area. It’s a key source of drinking water and provides for wildlife and recreation. Call it the jewell of the Ramapo Mountains.
The Journal News has a summer series of articles on people and places along the area’s waterways in the Lower Hudson Valley. Town of Ramapo environmental consultant and Curator of Harmony Hall Geoff Welch, also known as keeper of the Ramapo River Watershed, was featured discussing the important role the river plays in a Monday, July 18, front page story by Akiko Matsuda and videographer Tanya Savayan.
Welch was interviewed along the Ramapo River at Torne Valley’s H. Pierson Mapes Flat Rock Park in Hillburn, NY. Sloatsburg elementary school fourth graders periodically visit Flat Rock as part of Sloatsburg Elementary School’s yearly historical tour.
“It’s not a large watershed, but it’s a very important watershed for the water supply in the suburban areas of New York and New Jersey,” said Welch, referring to the area that’s been federally designated as a “sole source aquifer” of drinking water for about 2 million people in New York, including Rockland County, and New Jersey.
The Ramapo River Watershed is the one of the smallest watershed’s in New York and is part of the much-larger Passaic River Basin. With headwaters near the Town of Monroe in Orange County, the Ramapo Watershed runs from central-southern Orange County through western Rockland and into northern Bergen and Passaic Counties in New Jersey.
With population growth and increased development along the Ramapo River, the watershed is facing threats from urbanization and industrial development.
Read more about Geoff Welch and the Ramapo River Watershed.
Geoff Welch, the Ramapo River watershed keeper, is interviewed by at LoHud’s Akiko Matsuda at the H. Pierson Mapes Flat Rock Park in Hillburn, NY, on June 27, 2016. Welch has been involved in protecting the watershed since the 1980s, when the community fought for closing of the Ramapo Landfill. Video by Tania Savayan/The Journal News
