West Amwell Part of "Delaware River Sourland Mountain Region" DEP Designation to Receive Climate change resiliency study grants
The Township announced today on its website "West Amwell Receives DEP Grant", with a link to a larger New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announcement.
The DEP announcement is available here.
The website announcement appears somewhat inaccurate, we are not receiving grants at this time, but instead have been designated part of a new "Resilient NJ Region" called the Delaware River Sourland Mountain River Region by the DEP.
We do not have confirmation, but this sounds like the proposal discussed with the Watershed Institute and Lambertville Mayor Norwick in a recent Township Commitee on Stormwater management.
The Delaware River Sourland Mountain River Region consists of the following municipalities:
Lambertville
Stockton Borough
Delaware Township
West Amwell Township
East Amwell Township
Hopewell Township
Hopewell Borough
Pennington Borough
Part of the regional designation will also include The Sourland Conservancy and The Watershed Institute, both local environmental NGOs.
Each region, including ours, will "receive grants of up to $350,000" to "support their participation" in the Resilient NJ Program. More details on Resilient NJ can be found here:
Lambertville has participated in Resilient NJ in prior years. A 2025 report focused on just Lambertville can be found below:
Only Lambertville Mayor Norwick is quoted in the press release from our region, stating "Even five years ago, the idea that eight municipalities covering 150 square miles would come together for regional resilience planning seemed very unlikely. But not today. By committing to work across borders, elected leaders, volunteers, and CBOs in Hunterdon and Mercer County acknowledge the imperative nature of this initiative".
It is not clear who would be "in charge" of our region or how the $350,000 would allocated among municipalities. The Lambertville study shown above seemed to be long on pictures and lengthy narrative, and short on actual solutions. We hope if West Amwell becomes involve in this process, more meaningful studies will focus on our Township with concrete solutions that will accrue for Township residents.
If not managed carefully, this could be yet another slide of West Amwell towards becoming Lambertville East.
But as an aside - the study does identify Lambertville Public School (now the South Hunterdon Regional Elementary School) as having a "high vulnerability to flooding" and indicated that it could experience 6-15 feet of flooding in severe weather events.
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