Hope for river after years of abuse

By MOLLY MURRAY
Sussex Bureau reporter
04/15/2004

For anglers, shad are liquid silver that take a lure called a shad dart, run away with the line and dance across the surface of the water.

"They fight. They jump. They're like tarpon," said Mike Misiura, who catches shad for the challenge, just to throw them back in the Delaware River.

The success or failure of the Delaware shad run this spring depends a lot on the purity of the water. And the future of the Delaware River's water quality is a key issue in the debate over an Army plan to ship chemical weapons disposal waste to the DuPont Chambers Works plant and discharge the treated waste into the river.

The plan comes as environmental advocates and state, regional and federal officials are waging a decades-long effort to bring the Delaware River and its bay back after generations of environmental abuse.

For a river once so polluted it smelled of rotten eggs, so toxic it caused paint to yellow on nearby buildings, so devoid of oxygen in some areas that a fish like shad didn't stand much of a chance, even modest gains can be fragile.

Still, most regulators believe there is hope for the river - as long as they are vigilant against new potential threats. That's why John A. Hughes, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, wants to take a closer look at the Army disposal plan.

"In an environmentally stressed but recovering river and bay, we don't need a lot of oddball chemicals to worry about," Hughes said.

DuPont and the Army have said that discharging the treated waste from the destruction of VX would not harm people or aquatic life. "We would support an independent, third party review of the impact on the river," DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said.

Some Delawareans long ago concluded the river was polluted beyond repair. But for anglers like Misiura and others who consider the river a part of their life, the Army plan is worrisome.

Chris Naylor, 20, of Lewes, who regularly fishes at the Cape Henlopen State Park fishing pier, has mostly ignored the signs that warn not to eat many fish from the river because of contamination. With VX wastewater going into the river, he might have second thoughts.

"I eat a lot of fish that comes out of this water," Naylor said. "I know you're not supposed to eat much now. I hate to think what I'd be eating then."

Tale of two rivers

In many ways, the Delaware is two river systems.

Along one part of the Delaware shore, chemical plants and refineries discharge a steady stream of oil, grease, toxic metals and organic compounds into the river every day. Wilmington spills an estimated 700 million gallons of diluted but untreated sewage into the river every year when heavy rain overloads treatment plants.

The other Delaware River is so spectacular and unspoiled that federal officials have designated it a wild and scenic waterway, a major source of drinking water for millions of people in New York City and northern New Jersey. It, too, is troubled - by runoff from tree cutting, development pressure and efforts to control natural flooding.

The river is so big and diverse that some people in Delaware have no idea it has world-class trout fishing or rapids on its northern end, said Maya van Rossum, director of the environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

There's always been a "tension between human and ecological needs" on the river, van Rossum said.

The river was "a mess" in Colonial times, or so wrote Isaac Weld Jr., an Englishman on a visit to Philadelphia in 1769.

A pollution survey conducted in 1799 found contaminants from ships, wharves, sewer drains and polluted wetlands. By the end of the 1800s, pollution caused typhoid epidemics and other diseases in Philadelphia and other communities bordering the estuary.

In the years leading up to World War II, a 20-mile stretch of the river was so polluted there was no oxygen in the water and no fish or other aquatic life.

At the time, more than 200 industries in Philadelphia discharged 90,000 tons of waste a year into the river without treatment. Philadelphia discharged 350 million gallons of raw sewage a day into the river. Wilmington, Chester, Trenton and Camden used the river for similar waste disposal.

States cooperate

The four river states came together to address pollution before the start of WWII. The federal Clean Water Act of 1972 accelerated the effort.

The treatment of waste that has increased since then is "an international success story," said environmental scientist Richard W. Greene of DNREC.

Still, the legacies of the past remain, including the troubling compound polychlorinated bi-phenols, or PCBs.

Greene has spent more than a decade studying PCB contamination in the Delaware River and Bay, catching fish, grinding them in a blender and analyzing the chemical contaminants.

"People thought the problem would sunset," he said, because PCB production stopped in 1977. PCBs were used as an insulator in diesel train locomotives, utility company power lines, and as a component in dyes, carbonless copy paper and plastics.

The same things that make them stable in industrial uses make them persistent in the environment. They are a probable human carcinogen and are linked to neurological and reproductive damage.

While the levels of PCBs in recent years have been dropping in the fish that are tested, Greene said there are other toxins to worry about - mercury, dioxins and metals.

These days, oxygen levels in the river have improved enough that the area between Cherry Island flats near Wilmington to the Philadelphia International Airport is a key spawning area for striped bass. And shad can now make it through what used to be a dead zone to reach their spawning areas in Delaware.

But the comeback is tenuous.

"Delaware Bay at one time produced enormous quantities of fish," said Kent Price, professor emeritus at the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies in Lewes.

Catches, despite management plans for most species in Delaware Bay, have not come close to historic levels.

Ancient species like the horseshoe crab and sturgeon are in trouble despite state efforts to limit, and in the case of sturgeon, ban harvests.

"I get frightened when I think about what the future of the river is," van Rossum said.

Reach Molly Murray at 856-7372 or mmurray@delawareonline.com.

The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

Chris Naylor, 20, of Lewes, fishes at Cape Henlopen State Park Tuesday. Naylor said he mostly ignores warnings about eating fish from the river but treated VX wastewater may change his mind.

DuPont photo

The Secure Environmental Treatment facility at Chambers Works.