RIVER WATCH

“The Delaware River Basin is a global hotspot for PFAS pollution,” says Jeremy Conkle, Delaware River Basin Commission senior chemist/toxicologist and lead author of a recent three-year study on the presence of so-called forever chemicals. According to the study, which is available online, PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—were found in nearly every surface water site, sediment sample, and fish and crab sample taken around the Delaware River watershed.

Conkle says the PFAS Water Quality and Fish Tissue Assessment Study “adds more data showing that these chemicals are widely present in water, fish, crabs, and sediment, demonstrating that we are in the early stages of what will be a long-term effort to reduce their loading and protect ecosystem, organismal, and human health.” The highest concentration of the chemicals was found in Neshaminy and Marcus Hook creeks, both tributaries to the Delaware.

PFAS are a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals widely used in consumer and industrial products, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. They are used to keep food from sticking to packaging or cookware, make clothes and carpets resistant to stains, and create more effective firefighting foam. Growing scientific evidence supports the finding that they have significant impacts on both human health and the environment.

The commission has released an interactive app—PFAS in the Delaware River Basin—with information about PFAS contamination over geography and time.

The Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission is preparing the D&R Canal State Park’s first comprehensive master plan update in nearly four decades.

The project is funded by a $550,000 grant from the New Jersey Historic Trust. The revised master plan will guide the park’s development and inform the commission’s land-use plans for protecting the park’s historic, environmental, and water supply resources. The commission, which last updated the master plan in 1989, has contracted with Clarke Caton Hintz, a planning and design firm based in Trenton.

Spanning thirty-four municipalities from Frenchtown to New Brunswick, New Jersey, the seventy-mile linear park is a popular destination for hikers, cyclists, runners, and walkers. The D&R Canal opened in 1834 as a means of transporting goods—primarily Pennsylvania anthracite coal—between Philadelphia and New York. Today the canal provides drinking water for about one million people.

The centerpiece of the master plan revision is the Historic Structures Survey, last completed in 1982, which is being conducted by Hunter Research of Trenton. Historic structures inside the park include seventeen nineteenth-century buildings that were bridgetender or lock tenders' houses, says John Hutchison, executive director of the D&R Canal Commission.

Hutchison says residents who attended five public meetings on the plan, including one in Lambertville in July, have expressed interest in more amenities for cyclists, such as tire repair and comfort stations; directional and historical signage; and plantings to attract birds and pollinators and help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

A draft of the update is expected by February, with the final plan due in September 2027.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, William Tinsman hung an oversized American flag—vertically—from the downstream side of the Lumberville-Raven Rock pedestrian bridge over the Delaware River.

Tinsman did so without authorization from the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, the bi-state agency that maintains the river’s bridges connecting Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tinsman would replace the flag every six months or so, and over the ensuing quarter-century the flag would be seen by untold thousands, becoming something of a River Towns landmark.

After Tinsman died in 2023, his son, Will, assumed his father’s role as keeper of the flag. But that duty will soon fall to the toll bridge commission, which recently announced it would take over the responsibility, and the cost, of replacing and maintaining the flag. According to a statement released by the commission: “The new flag will be double-sided, enabling its union (the blue field with stars) to be positioned to the top left regardless of whether the observer is upstream or downstream of the bridge.”

The commission has not set a date for taking over the flag duties, but a commission spokesman said it would be later this year.