At a greenhouse and garden growing behind the Metropolitan Baptist Church’s Willing Heart Community Care Center on MLK Boulevard, Newark native, resident and Army veteran Rodney Spencer is getting his hands dirty… “I was living in my car for a while after I left the service,” said Spencer, 41, program intern for the Rutgers Veterans Environmental Technology and Solutions, or Rutgers VETS, which teaches veterans employment skills using a holistic approach involving landscaping, horticulture and urban farming. “But after I found this program, everything fell into place.”… The Rutgers VETS program is a groundbreaking initiative launched in May 2014 to reduce immediate health risks to people who eat fish caught from the Passaic River, while empowering local, unemployed veterans with new green job skills that can be used immediately… “We keep hearing about people fishing on the river, but the veterans have been scouting and they aren’t finding them,” said Amy Rowe, an assistant professor with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Essex County and co-director of the Rutgers VETS program. “However, we’re only halfway through the fishing season and we intend to continue our efforts.”