Clean Air Council and Coalition Submit The Delaware River Fish Protection Petition
The Delaware River’s water quality tremendously improved over the past 50 years between Philadelphia and Wilmington. A multitude of fish species including striped bass, the American shad and the endangered Atlantic sturgeon have returned to areas that were once heavily polluted, oxygen-depleted “dead zones.”
However, in recent decades, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) has been slow to update its water quality standards to adequately protect these rebounding fish populations. Each summer when dissolved oxygen levels, the amount of oxygen in water, dip especially low due to rising water temperatures, increased stormwater runoff, and combined sewer system discharges, the Atlantic sturgeon fails to spawn at successful rates and moves one step closer to extinction.
On March 3, 2021, Clean Air Council submitted the Delaware River Fish Protection Petition to DRBC as part of a coalition including Delaware Riverkeeper Network, PennFuture, Environment New Jersey, and over a dozen other organizations. The petition calls on the DRBC to update its water quality standards, the regulations that limit the amount of pollution permit holders can discharge into the river, for the stretch of river extending from Philadelphia and Camden, NJ to Wilmington, DE to protect aquatic life to the full extent required under the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act mandates that DRBC’s water quality standards must protect all of the aquatic life uses already taking place in the river and that standards must be revised if they fall short of doing so. The coalition’s Delaware River Fish Protection Petition, which complements a previous petition submitted to DRBC by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network in 2013, compiles evidence from DRBC’s own reports and external data to document the aquatic life uses that currently take place in this section of the river but remain unprotected under DRBC’s water quality standards. These existing but unprotected uses include “maintenance and propagation of resident fish and other aquatic life” and “spawning and nursery habitat for migratory fish.” The petition also calls on DRBC to raise its dissolved oxygen standard for this section of the river, which DRBC hasn’t adjusted since before the Clean Water Act of 1972, to a level that can adequately support these uses and prevent rebounding fish populations from declining.
The petition calls on DRBC to take swift action by highlighting the urgent need to protect the Delaware River’s genetically unique and endangered population of Atlantic sturgeon, and complements the Safe and Healthy Delaware River Petition, which Clean Air Council submitted to DRBC as part of a coalition in March 2020. The Safe and Healthy Delaware River Petition calls for DRBC to tighten its water quality standards for the section of the river between Northeast Philadelphia and the city of Chester to protect the health of everyone who enjoys “primary contact recreation” activities such as kayaking and canoeing.
Together, these two petitions strongly urge DRBC to comply with the Clean Water Act immediately to protect aquatic life and ensure that future generations can safely enjoy a clean Delaware River.
For more information, contact Jack Byerly, Advocacy Coordinator at jbyerly@cleanair.org
