"It's the best news I've heard in quite a while," said Bill Kibler, executive director of the South Branch Watershed Association, an organization that works to preserve water quality in parts of Morris, Hunterdon and Somerset counties.

"At one point in its history the Raritan had a huge shad and herring run," he said. "That was destroyed by dams. Shad are not anywhere near as athletic as salmon, and if you put a barrier in their way like a dam, that's it — they're done."