Historical Improvements

*CONTENTS (click on each to jump to section)

 

	Although the Delaware River has been utilized for thousands of years, the quality of the water source began decreasing rapidly from the time of initial European settlement in the early 17th century until corrective, preventative, and protective measures were taken beginning in the 20th century.
	The river's pollution problem developed from abuse and overuse over time, especially in the heavily populated and industrialized estuary region of the Lower Delaware River, into which colonists dumped their domestic, agricultural, and industrial waste.
	Additionally, contaminants from buried waste leaked into groundwater supplies over the years.

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Colonial Philadelphia

	The majority of early colonial Philadelphia's water supply came from wells until the end of the 18th century, when a yellow fever epidemic hit the city in 1793.
	In 1798, it was discovered that cesspools of buried waste, which were too close to the city's water supplies, were contaminating groundwater.
	Waste was then dumped into canals, which carried it into the rivers.
	Lacking wastewater treatment technology and the foresight to predict the problems that would result from their actions, colonists continually dumped millions of tons of raw sewage into the streams and rivers, which increased contaminant and nutrient levels and decreased the pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) in the waters.
	Thus, their actions adversely affected aquatic life and water quality.
	Corrective measures to improve the quality of drinking water were undertaken at the beginning of the 19th century.
	However, preventative measures regarding protecting the quality of the rivers and streams as resources were not initiated until later.

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The Evolution of Purification

	As one of the earliest, most significant, and most polluted areas in the watershed, the City of Philadelphia provides an interesting case study on water quality improvement for drinking purposes.
	In 1801, Philadelphia began pumping untreated water from the Schuylkill River to supply the city's residents with a reliable source of drinking water.
	The only primitive form of purification that the water received in the early 1800s was settlement in still reservoirs in order to remove debris.
	However, as the city became more populated and industrialized, increasing pollution in the rivers led to problems that could not be settled out: odors, tastes and typhoid.
	Filtration over sand beds was the next step.
	An 1899 report that resulted from seven studies made between 1858 and 1899 on water sources and treatment led to the construction of 5 "slow sand" filtration treatment plants between 1902 and 1911.
	Water was first sent through pre-filters of coke or sponge, then it passed over sand beds, and eventually settled in raw water basins.
	The new filtration system cut the typhoid death rate in the city by one- fourth.
	Shortly after chlorine treatment was initiated in 1913, typhoid was eradicated.

	In order to remove the odors and tastes that were still problematic in Philadelphia's otherwise safe drinking water, chemical treatments with carbon, ozone, and chlorine dioxide were also necessary in the 1940s and early 1950s when Philadelphia's rivers were for all intents and purposes, "open sewers".
	Despite its pollution crisis, the city developed a successful method for treating river water in order to make it drinkable.
	Philadelphia continued paving the way in water purification when in 1976 it became the first city in the country to build a plant to research the best ways of removing trace organics, odors, and tastes from drinking water (City of Philadelphia, 1989).

	In the 1920s, Philadelphia and Trenton, two of the biggest sources of pollution on the river, both made individual attempts to clean up their wastewater acts by building a wastewater treatment plant in their  respective cities in order to cleanse city sewage of most of its harmful components before returning the water to the Delaware River.
	It was not until after WWII, (during which water quality improvement initiatives were put on hold) that two more regional wastewater treatment plants were built in Philadelphia: the Southwest Plant in 1954, and the Southeast Plant in 1955.

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INCODEL - DRBC

	However, the first concerted basin-wide efforts to make sustainable improvements in the quality of the watershed's source water resources were not officially implemented until the Interstate Commission on  the Delaware River Basin (INCODEL) was founded in 1936.
	INCODEL, whose members consisted of the four basin states Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, was primarily organized as an advisory committee in order to develop solutions to  the water pollution problem within the basin and to strategize about how to deal with concerns regarding increasing population and industrial development, which would affect the watershed in the near future.
	To that end, INCODEL soon expanded its focus to include conservation, water supply, and other issues facing the Delaware River Basin (Delaware Public Archives,  http://www.state.de.us/sos/dpa/collections/aghist/0903.htm).

	INCODEL's most significant accomplishments include dividing the Delaware River into six water "zones" for monitoring purposes (See Figure 1), establishing water quality standards for those zones, and upgrading  sewage treatment plants.
	According to the Council on Environmental Quality (1975), the number of communities with "adequate" sewage collection and treatment plants increased from 20 to 75% under INCODEL (Marrazzo & Panzitta, 1984).
	However, this pioneer river management organization had no legal authority to enforce its recommendations, and for this reason, a new organization was necessary in order to enforce water quality initiatives  and regulations (Roberts).
	As a result of the signing of the Delaware River Basin Compact in 1961, INCODEL morphed into the present watershed guardian, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), a revamped group with an expanded vision for protecting the watershed and its resources and with the legal power it needed to enforce its regulations.
	The chief members of the DRBC are the governors of the four basin states (NY, PA, NJ, and DE), and a federal representative appointed by the President of the United States.
	Prior to the formation of the DRBC, it took 43 state, 14 interstate, and 19 federal agencies to monitor the basin (DRBC, http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/over.htm).
	Under this new, unified and more efficient Delaware River Basin Commission authority, the first of its kind in  its unique collaboration between State and Federal water management officials, many improvements have been  made in the quality of the basin's water resources over the last four decades.

Source: Delaware River Basin Commission

 

	Shortly after taking over the duties of INCODEL, the DRBC took part in a $1.2 million Delaware clean-up program.
	In 1967, the DRBC began water quality studies and set higher water quality standards based on a computer model that determined the Delaware's waste assimilative capacity.
	The model led to a DRBC mandate for an 88% reduction in oxygen-demanding waste (BOD) for 90 major dischargers to be accomplished through new wasteload allocations.
	In addition, water pollution control programs in the 1960s also required the construction of secondary wastewater treatment facilities at more than 90 discharge sites in the estuary (Roberts, and Marrazzo and Panzitta, 1984).

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Legislation (The Clean Water Act)

	Perhaps the most influential piece of legislation to date is the Clean Water Act of 1972, the nation's first water resource protection legislation.
	Originally passed as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1948 (Chapter 758; PL 845), the goal was to improve the condition of ground and surface waters by eliminating or reducing pollution in interstate water bodies.
	Amended in 1972 and referred to as the Clean Water Act (CWA), this law has since been expanded over the years to include many other water quality programs that have contributed to the continuous improvements in the quality of the nation's water.
	The Clean Water Act is responsible for the implementation of secondary treatment in municipal wastewater treatment plants (City of Philadelphia Water Department, http://170.115.80.16/water/protect.html) and the institution of water quality standards, discharge limitations, and permits (U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, http://www.usbr.gov/laws/cleanwat.html).

	The act also established the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program, which affects more than 20,000 river segments, lakes, and estuaries, and attempts to limit excessive discharges of pollution in our water supplies.
	According to the EPA, a TMDL is "the amount of pollutants that may be present in the water and still meet water quality standards" (EPA, http://gwpc.site.net/news/nws-epa_impaired_waters_rule.htm).
	A TMDL takes into account such pollutants as fecal coliform, sediment, nutrients, shellfish, organics, metals, pH, and other materials that decrease dissolved oxygen (Water Online, http://www.wateronline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid= {14DA2CA3-12C0-11D5-A770-00D0B7694F32}&VNETCOOKIE=NO).

	The nation's water systems, and we as users, are daily reaping the benefits of the Clean Water Act and its subsequent amendments.
	The fruits of these legislative labors have been noted in the Delaware since the beginning of the DRBC's clean-up efforts in the 1960s.
	To this day there has been a reported 76% decrease in the amount of BOD discharged into the Delaware Estuary (DRBC, 2002) and DO levels have steadily increased in vulnerable zones of the river since 1965, particularly in the heavily industrialized estuary area (Krejmas, Harkness, and Carswell, Jr., 2000, The Report of the River Master of the Delaware River for the period Dec.1, 1997--Nov.30, 1998, p. 78).
	As a result, many fish populations that had nearly disappeared before pollution abatement efforts were made have since reappeared in greater numbers (i.e. herring, shad, sturgeon, and other anadromous fish).

Since the CWA, other legislative efforts have been made to improve the quality of water in the Delaware River Basin as we continue to recognize the importance of water quality control.

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Recent Legislation

	Recent legislation includes protective measures for both our surface and groundwater resources as sources of our drinking water, as well as quality control for treatment plants.
	In April of 2000, the EPA announced that as part of the new amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act signed by President Clinton in 1996, a new law will require states to survey the sources of all drinking water systems, including publicly-used groundwater systems, that may be vulnerable to contamination in order to preserve water quality by protecting groundwater supplies from E. coli and other disease-causing viruses and bacteria.
	Currently, only contaminated surface water systems require corrective measures, such as disinfection, to be taken, but the new law will mandate similar actions for contaminated groundwater supplies, as well as alterations to defective supply systems (EPA, http://gwpc.site.net/News/nws-EPAgwsourceprot.htm).

In May of 2001 the EPA issued the Filter Backwash Recycling Rule (FBRR), as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act, in order to reduce microbial contamination by pathogens such as Cryptosporidium in drinking water supplies.

The FBRR, which is estimated to affect 35 million people, puts an end to the filter "backwashing" that routinely takes place in many drinking water treatment plants that clean filters by pumping water backwards through them to remove particulates, a process that increases the risk of contamination because the backwash water is often recycled back into the plant containing high levels of microbes (EPA, http://gwpc.site.net/news/nws-epa_issues_drinking_water_rule.htm and EPA, http://gwpc.site.net/news/nws-epa_administrator_whitman_further_prot_ drinking_water.htm).

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Acid Mine Drainage

	In addition, the EPA is still trying to make headway in the fight against acid mine drainage damage to our waterways.
	Pennsylvania and the Federal government has spent almost $500 million since 1967 to remedy pollution from abandoned surface and deep mines, but more than $15 billion worth of cleanup work still needs to be completed.
	AMD is still a problem in Pond Creek and Sandy Run Creek in the Lehigh River Basin (central Delaware River Basin).
	These cleanup efforts are funded by a 35 cent per ton federal fee on coal being mined today, state reclamation funds from fees, and forfeited reclamation bonds (DEP, http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate /enved/go_with_inspector/coalmine/Coal_Mining_in_Pennsylvania.htm).
	In April of 2000, the EPA proposed changes to current discharge guidelines for mines, which would increase the rate at which abandoned mines are reclaimed, thereby using the leftover coal while improving water quality by decreasing the risk of contamination to water sources (Ground Water Protection Council, http://gwpc.site.net/news/nws-july30-01.htm).
	These new guidelines would be a crucial protective step in the prevention of more AMD damage to watershed waterways, because although there was a sharp decrease in anthracite production after World War II, mining has increased more than 150 percent since 1990 due to new uses of coal in cogeneration, industrial and residential heating, and as a source of fuel for electric power plants.

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Coal Mining

	Presently, anthracite is mined in eight Pennsylvania counties: Schuylkill, Carbon, Luzerne, Northumberland, Lackawanna, Columbia, Dauphin and Sullivan (ranked in order of production), and Pennsylvania is the fourth largest coal-producing state in the United States after Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky.
	More than $1.5 billion in coal sales are responsible for about one percent of the gross state economic product of Pennsylvania.
	Keeping in mind that mining efforts continue in these areas to this day, it is important that efforts be made to curb pollution from these operations in order to preserve the health of our waterways (DEP, http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/enved/go_with_inspector /coalmine/Anthracite_Coal_Mining.htm).

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Summation/Current Conditions

	While it is not anywhere near as pristine as it was in pre-colonial days, water quality in the Delaware River today is the best it has been in over 100 years due to ongoing pollution control, prevention programs and legislation, which were initiated by the DRBC in the 1960s and are carried on today by the DRBC, the EPA, and associated organizations.
	As a whole, the river exceeds current standards, with the exceptions of seasonal violations of DO and fecal coliform levels in the estuary area, as well as toxic contaminants and nutrient loading alerts, which often result in fish advisories for certain affected sections of the river.
	However, the tremendous improvement that has been made since the Delaware River's darkest days represents the priority that has been placed on improving and preserving our water resources in the last four decades.
	The time and effort that will be invested in protecting and bettering the watershed in the future will continue this trend of improvement.

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