Page 28 RAIN November/December 1984 Voices of Reinhabitation ~--- --·----------------------------·.---·----·-------·---------·------·--···· ----- -----·-···- ------·-·--------··---- e Delaware er tershed People on the West Coast tend to be chauviniMic about their environmentalism. After all, Lov·e Canal, Three Mile Island, and New York City ·are all Back East., Well, the fact is that New Jersey, of all places, has something like the second most stringent environmental regulations in the nation. New jersey is the state known for crm.uded suburbs and highways, smelly refineries, and toxic-zuaste dumps that make headlines. But New f ers~y alsa_·has pockets of the most beautiful scenery I've seen arz.ywhere, widely varied geology, and wild bears! There are native cacti growing along the banks of the Delaware. There are forests of threefoot-high trees. There are, in other words, things worth saving, besides the basic needs for clean air.and water. Furthermore, many people are actively protecting the llatural resources of the area. The group working to save the Delaware River watershed is Del-AWARE Unlimited (6 Stockton Avenue, New Hope, PA 18938; 2151862-9862). Terri Gabriell is the Executive Director of Del-AWARE. - TK ' by Terri Gabriell The Delaware River Watershed is defined by the river and all the lands that drain into it. It begins at the borders of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and extends south to Delaware and Delaware Bay. The watershed includes the Lehigh and Schuylkill Rivers, and from east to west, extends from an area west of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to New Jersey's coastal plain. . Our river and valley face serious threats both in terms of water depletion and pollution. The Delaware, the last free-flowing river east of the Mississippi, is managed by a c·ompact arrangement of the four states that share its shores and a representative from the U.S. Department of the Interior. They allocate the waters to ensure that New York City can withdraw an enormous 800 million gallons daily (MGD), granted by the Supreme Court in 1954, while maintaining minimum flow objectives downstream. _ This type of compact arrangement has resulted in the demise of the mighty Colorado River, which ends in a ditch without reaching the sea, and we at DelAWARE Unlimited, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to saving the Delaware, are working to see that this never happens here. Our organization began as a gr';lssroots effort to stop construction of the Point Pleasant pumping station, a proposed diversion to pump 95 MGD out of the river. Half of it would provide municipal water, for which no need has been proven; the other half \voulq be pumped ac!oss two counties and evaporate at the Limerick nuclea~ power plant outside Philadelphia. Early on, we asked for a public referendum on the pump_, and were denied. As bulldozers prepared to
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