Duck Pond and a Better Way to Think About Land

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Let me introduce you to a 12,000-year-old feature of Roxbury, New Jersey, that has been off limits to the general public for more than 125 years.

This photo, courtesy of Ashland Chemical Corporation, is likely your first peek at the beautiful Duck Pond. It was mine as well. It is a 15-acre, spring-fed pond in the northeastern corner of the 1,000-acre Hercules property in Kenvil. 

Duck Pond appears on the earliest maps of the area. It has no natural inlet or outlet and apparently never did. Spring water vents up into the pond and then infiltrates back into the shallow, unconfined aquifer upon which it sits. This has likely been true since it was created when the Wisconsin Glacier receded thousands of years ago. 

Old historical documents I've read indicate that this entire tract of land was once the summer home of the Leni Lenape natives, who undoubtedly fished and swam in this pond. It was these original people who referred to the southern wetland on the property as the Great Spring. They named the Black River, which flows from this wetland, “Alamatong,” meaning “gentle flowing.” This refers to the rapid yet smooth flow of its water over a bed of glacial sand. From this Algonquian word, we derive the name Lamington, which is the official name of the stream. 

The reason most of us have never seen Duck Pond is that it is located within a polluted industrial area that has been off-limits to residents and the public for well over one hundred twenty-five years. The production of explosives ceased three decades ago, but there are still hot spots of pollution on the land. It remains an unsafe place to freely roam around. 

What motivates me to write this now is a PowerPoint slide presented by Hartz Mountain Corporation during a Roxbury Township Planning Board hearing. For those who may not know, Hartz Mountain was seeking to build 54 acres of warehouses on a 200-acre parcel on the property. One of the PowerPoint slides labeled Duck Pond as a drainage area. 

I was struck by this sterile language. I've seen similar language in other Hercules-related documents. Indeed, Duck Pond is a drainage area, as is every freshwater lake in the world. However, the use of the term in the context of clean-up operations conveys how the pond was utilized while explosives were manufactured on the property. It is perhaps how the pond is still viewed by some. Duck Pond is yet another place to be addressed on the property- a site that has been horribly abused for a century and a half. 

Just as groups of people can be marginalized and robbed of their personhood through word choices, so too can it happen to portions of our biosphere that we call “property.” Property is a lifeless term that allows our consciences to treat a piece of land as something other than a living habitat. 

My point is that viewing Hercules as a compromised yet beautifully complex habitat should be the foundation for all subsequent considerations. Whether we take active measures to clean up our mess or allow nature time to renew the land on its own, the language we choose to describe it will influence our decisions and the outcomes that follow. We should always be respectful, even reverent, of biological spaces and our use of land. We must not treat the Hercules property with any less consideration due to its troubled past.

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An 1887 map of “Suckasunny” showing Duck Pond in the McCainsville District of Roxbury.