From Poisoned Waters to Proven Truth
By Adam Reiser
“I understand pollution not as a theory... but as a wound.”
I didn’t learn about pollution in a textbook. I lived it.
I grew up in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey a town poisoned by DuPont. Where you lived determined your fate. On one side of town, you had clean water. On the other, you had a slow death sentence.
My father.
My grandmother.
Thirty-seven classmates and their families.
All gone.
For nearly a century, DuPont’s 570-acre munitions plant dumped mercury, lead, and cancer-causing solvents like TCE and PCE into our soil, our air, and our lives. Acid Brook just a stream to some was a warning to us. That’s where the waste flowed. We swam in it. Fished from it. Drank from poisoned wells.
In 2009, a state health study confirmed what many already knew: cancer rates were elevated. Over 450 homes were found contaminated by vapor intrusion. DuPont had known. Since the 1980s. They stalled. They minimized. They let it fester.
But Nature Was Always My First Teacher
Before I ever knew what a toxic plume was, I roamed the Ramapo Mountains. I tracked deer, hunted small game, and lived off the land. I was a woodsman before I ever became a technologist. I lived outdoors in Wanaque, just over the ridge.
That raw connection to the earth shaped me. And when the truth of Pompton Lakes hit me, it reshaped me.
I became an eco-warrior. I boarded whaling ships in South America. I stood between harpoons and whales. I hiked the Appalachian Trail, camped deep in Yosemite, and fly-fished the remote rivers of the Ural Mountains back when it was still the USSR.
But love wasn’t enough.
Passion Doesn’t Clean Water—Proof Does
You can’t fight corporate negligence with passion alone. You need systems. Infrastructure. Transparency. That’s why I adapted Verity One a platform I had originally built for supply chain truth into a tool for environmental restoration.
We integrated AI, blockchain, ERP, and IoT to do something no lawsuit or protest could: measure redemption. We turned grief into verification. Loss into ledgers. Lies into immutable truth.
Meeting William Tolar Nolley Jr.
A True Pioneer
I met William Tolar Nolley Jr. (1957–2024), a quiet pioneer who spent over 20 years restoring Chesapeake Bay’s polluted waters using oysters—long before anyone talked about sensors, IoT, or on-chain validation.
He didn’t just farm oysters. He created the first time-based nutrient credit oyster system, proving that ecosystem recovery could be tracked, valued, and repeated.
He didn’t need a business partner—he needed a partner in purpose. I came alongside him to digitize and validate his handwritten logs, field notes, and sample data. Together, we built the first machine-verified, waterman-powered environmental data packages submitted to NOAA frameworks—records that became the foundation for what Verity One is today.
Those were gritty days: fax machines, water samples, FedEx runs, dockside interviews. William taught me to listen not just to data—but to the water, and to the watermen. His legacy lives on in every smart contract, QR-coded certificate, and oyster that now restores our coastlines at scale.
Then one night, I told him,
“Tolar, it’s ready. We can hand it off.”
He looked at me and said,
“Adam, I’m dying. This isn’t my project anymore. It’s yours.”
He passed the next day. His final words:
“If not you, who? Do it right. Pay the watermen fairly.”
That wasn’t a handoff. That was a vow.
From Chesapeake Bay to NYC: One Oyster at a Time
We began in the Chesapeake. Then Connecticut. Now, we’re deploying in New York City. IoT-equipped oyster cages. Blockchain-tracked. Each one filtering nitrogen, phosphorus, oil, microplastics, and heavy metals.
These oysters aren’t for eating. They’re for healing.
Every cage. Every data point. Every Nutrient Credit we generate is proof, not propaganda.
We’re Not Waiting for Courtrooms
DuPont left behind vapor mitigation systems, a dredged lake, and an uncontained toxic plume. Chemours took over in 2015. Lawsuits are still dragging on.
We’re not.
We’re verifying coastal cleanup, issuing transparent credits, and putting watermen back at the heart of the economy they once fed.
This Fight Is Personal
I still get emotional when I tell this story. But I tell it anyway. Because the world needs to hear:
We don’t have to live like this.
We can measure healing—not just harm.
We can track redemption—not just emissions.
We can build a cleaner world—not with slogans, but with systems.
One oyster. One reef. One verified credit at a time.
There is no Plan B.
There is no Planet B.
Nutrient Credits as a Tradable Asset Class
Place this after explaining tokenization or blockchain integration, ideally near the end as a powerful takeaway:
This isn’t just about cleaning water—it’s about creating value.
We’ve launched a brand-new asset class: Nutrient Credits tradable worldwide, backed by oyster-based restoration. These credits live within a Real-World Asset (RWA) framework powered by blockchain, AI, and IoT.
That means every cage, oyster, farm, and credit is verifiable, traceable, and financialize. Water restoration becomes a transparent, measurable currency in global markets and ESG portfolios an oyster-powered model for environmental impact you can hold, trade, invest in.