Search Results for: "Amy Rowe"

A fish-exchange program that allows fisherman to swap fish caught in the Passaic River for farm-raised tilapia is starting up again this Friday, July 29, in Lyndhurst. The fish-exchange program is part of the Rutgers VETS (Veterans Environmental Techno…

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.”

There is an aquaponics program located in the heart of Newark New Jersey’s Central Ward that belies its urban setting – literally taking its visitors to another time and place… This project is a partnership between the Metropolitan Reassertion Community Development Corporation (MRCDC), which is the development arm of Metropolitan Baptist Church and the Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (CPG), a group of companies dedicated to helping clean up the Lower Passaic. In close cooperation with Rutgers University Cooperative Extension, the new center aims to hire and train unemployed veterans to run an aquaponics program that will raise hybrid tilapia and vegetables in an area of the City where healthy food sources are badly needed. The program will also provide veterans with training in sustainable landscaping and stormwater management, river restoration and small business management… “The fish exchange is being introduced in order to reduce the human health risk associated with the ingestion of contaminated fish,” explained Dr. Amy Rowe, Environmental and Resource Management Agent for Essex/Passaic Counties. “Community members will be educated by the veterans in this program about the risks of eating contaminated fish, as well as all the ways that Newark residents can do their part to help improve the overall health of the Passaic River.”