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Rutgers Veterans Environmental Technology and Solutions (VETS) Program

April 12, 2016, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Location Center for Environmental and Life Sciences - 120
Posted InCollege of Science and Mathematics
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About Dr. Amy Rowe

Amy Rowe joined Rutgers in 2010 and is the Environmental and Resource Management Agent for Essex and Passaic Counties. Her background is in water chemistry with a concentration on the fate and transport of contaminants. Amy has worked in stormwater management for more than 10 years and her outreach programming focused on green infrastructure in urban environments and green jobs training programs. Amy earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers in Environmental Sciences.

About the Presentation

The Rutgers Veterans Environmental Technology and Solutions (VETS) program mission is to improve the lives of unemployed veterans in Essex County, NJ and to work with them to protect the Lower Passaic River and its watershed. The VETS program provides local, unemployed veterans with environmental training and new green job skills. It promotes trainees’ civic engagement and leadership by working with a broad cross-section of the Essex County community to revitalize distressed neighborhoods through green infrastructure projects and increases healthy eating lifestyles for families and children in Newark through an active greenhouse and community garden. The veterans implemented the nation’s first-ever fish exchange, a groundbreaking initiative to reduce immediate health risks to families of subsistence fishermen who eat fish caught in the Lower Passaic River, while a long term clean-up program is determined and implemented by the EPA and responsible parties. It is a pound-for-pound exchange of contaminated fish for clean fish, raised by the trainees as part of an aquaponics system used in the greenhouse.