Sec. 2. Findings
745 words·~3 min read·
/bill/113/hr/644/ih/section-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress finds that— the Delaware River Basin is a national treasure of great cultural, environmental, and ecological importance; the Basin contains over 12,500 square miles of land in the States of Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, including nearly 800 square miles of bay and more than 2,000 tributary rivers and streams; the Basin is home to more than 8,000,000 people who depend on the Delaware River and the Delaware Bay as an economic engine, a place of recreation, and a vital habitat for fish and wildlife; the Basin provides clean drinking water to more than 15,000,000 people, including New York City, which relies on the Basin for approximately half of the drinking water supply of the city, and Philadelphia, whose most significant threat to the drinking water supply of the city is forest clearing in the Upper Basin, according to a study conducted by the Philadelphia Water Department; almost 180 species of fish and wildlife are considered special status species in the Basin due to habitat loss and degradation, particularly sturgeon, eastern oyster, and red knots, which have been identified as unique species in need of habitat improvement; the Basin provides habitat for over 200 resident and migrant fish species, includes significant recreational fisheries, and is a prolific source of eastern oyster, blue crab, and the largest population of the American horseshoe crab; the annual value of commercial Eastern oyster landings for the Delaware Estuary is $3,700,000 per year in 2010 dollars, making it the fourth-most lucrative fishery in the Delaware River Basin watershed, and oyster populations are rebounding despite many years of below-average biological recruitment due, in part, to pollution and disease; the Delaware Bay has the second largest concentration of shorebirds in North America and is designated as 1 of the 4 most important shorebird migration sites in the world; the Basin, 50 percent of which is forested, also has 1,000,000 acres of wetland, more than 126,000 acres of which are recognized as internationally important, resulting in a landscape that provides essential ecosystem services, including recreation, commercial, and water quality benefits; much of the remaining exemplary natural landscape in the Basin is vulnerable to further degradation, as the Basin gains approximately 14 square miles of developed land annually, and with new development, urban watersheds are increasingly covered by impervious surfaces, amplifying the quantity of polluted runoff into rivers and streams; the Delaware River is the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi, and a critical component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System in the Northeast; management of water volume in the Basin is critical to flood mitigation and habitat for fish and wildlife, and following 3 major floods along the Delaware River since 2004, the Governors of the States of Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania have called for natural flood damage reduction measures to combat the problem, including restoring the function of riparian corridors; the Delaware River Port Complex (including docking facilities in the States of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) is one of the largest freshwater port in the world, the Port of Philadelphia handles the largest volume of international tonnage and 70 percent of the oil shipped to the East Coast, and the Port of Wilmington, a full-service deepwater port and marine terminal, is the busiest terminal on the Delaware River, handling more than 400 vessels per year with an annual import/export cargo tonnage of more than 4,000,000 tons; the Delaware Estuary, where freshwater from the Delaware River mixes with saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean, is 1 of the largest and most complex of the 28 estuaries in the National Estuary Program, and the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary works to improve the environmental health of the Delaware Estuary; the Delaware River Basin Commission is a Federal-interstate compact government agency charged with overseeing a unified approach to managing the river system and implementing important water resources management projects and activities throughout the Basin that are in the national interest; restoration activities in the Basin are supported through several Federal and State agency programs, and funding for those important programs should continue and complement the establishment of the Delaware River Basin Restoration Program, which is intended to build on and help coordinate restoration and protection funding mechanisms at the Federal, State, regional, and local levels; and the existing and ongoing voluntary conservation efforts in the Delaware River Basin necessitate improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness, as well as increased private-sector investments and coordination of Federal and non-Federal resources.