Our Water Quality: Streams and Stream Protection in the 7Th Congressional District of Pennsylvania
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Our Water Quality: Streams and Delaware County, with smaller parts in Chester and Montgomery Counties. The year 2,000 census Stream Protection in the population of the 7 th Congressional District was nearly th 650,000. Its population density of 2,210 persons per 7 Congressional District of square mile (or 3 people per acre on average) varies Pennsylvania greatly from place to place within the District. Dense aggregations of people stress localized water resources The quality of a region’s surface waterways is one key and pose difficulties in maintaining environmental quality element affecting the health, safety, convenience, and including clean water. Private entities are reluctant to aesthetic enjoyment that people can experience there. absorb the costs of water quality protection when the Waterways furnish public water supplies, convey flood benefits are shared with the public at large, even where flows, disperse wastes, transport people and goods, technical measures now exist. In recent years provide habitat for fish and wildlife, and offer recreational awareness has been growing about the more opportunities to Commonwealth residents and visitors. generalized water quality impacts of air pollution, acid Clean streams lined by woods increase property value. rain, and manmade climate change which exacerbate local water quality problems in this District as well as Rights and Goals across great rural expanses of the Commonwealth, the nation, and worldwide. The Pennsylvania Constitution , Article 1 Declaration of Rights , Section 27, declares: The 7th Congressional District contains all or part of twenty-five municipalities, whose boundaries intersect The people have a right to clean air, pure water, with more than 100 recognized watersheds. Those and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, independent municipalities have adopted a patchwork historic and esthetic values of the environment. quilt of ordinances that affect water quality through their Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the land use and development controls. Few Pennsylvania common property of all the people, including municipalities regulate water quality directly, as would be generations yet to come. As trustee of these necessary to fill gaps in environmental protection at the resources, the Common- wealth shall conserve State and Federal level, or have joined with neighboring and maintain them for the benefit of all the municipalities on a watershed basis to regulate water people. quality cooperatively. Each county has a conservation district that regulates erosion and sediment control from The Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law [Act 394 of 1937, as land disturbances, and thereby can significantly affect amended, 35 P.S . 691.1 et seq .] establishes local water quality. Yet the public benefits from water requirements for protecting streams in the quality still are displaced by the private gain from water Commonwealth from pollution. For a generation, pollution to those who in return contribute to political fishable and swimmable waters also have been a decisionmakers in the District and the Commonwealth. nationwide minimum goal of the Clean Water Act [the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, P.L. 92-500, The 7th Congressional District today is traversed by as amended, 33 USC 1311 et seq .], which recognizes about 825 linear miles of State-recognized the primary right and responsibility of the States to watercourses, natural features inherited from its rugged control water quality. Polls today show that the aims of Appalachian piedmont and the flatter Atlantic coastal the Clean Water Act remain popular. Yet there remains a plain topography along the Delaware River. That means vast gap between goals on paper and facts on the there are nearly 3 stream miles per square mile of land ground. Some of the worst instances of pollution have area on average across the District. Along the eastern been cleaned up, but the fishable/ swimmable goal th and southern margins of Delaware County, numerous remains far from reality in much of the 7 Congressional tributaries have been piped or otherwise modified by District. land development over the past three centuries, but there still are many more streams visible on the land Uncomfortable Facts surface within this District than in adjacent Philadelphia Water quality today varies dramatically across small County, where only the very largest watercourses distances, especially within a diverse area as large as remain exposed above ground. the 294 square-mile 7th District of Pennsylvania, which includes parts of three suburban counties west of Apart from the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, virtually Philadelphia. The largest part of the District is in all streams within the Chester and Delaware County 1 sections of the 7th District rise within the District itself--- Marcus Hook Creek, Chester Creek, Crum Creek, Trout hence their water quality can be greatly affected by local Run, Little Crum Creek, Stony Creek, Muckinipattis governments. Several Montgomery County and a few Creek, Hermesprota Creek, Darby Creek, Naylors Run, Chester County streams flow into the District from and Cobbs Creek. Major public improvement projects outside sources. like I-95, I-476, and Philadelphia International Airport have been implemented with only the most cursory Commercial navigation of economic importance is attention to alternatives and to impacts on the 7 th District restricted to the Delaware River and the Schuylkill environment, and their minimal efforts at “mitigation” River. Only the larger named streams within the 7th have been feeble, contributing to non-attainment of water District are large enough to support recreational quality in streams and wetlands. boating. Dammed reservoirs may or may not be assigned the same classification as the streams that The Schuylkill River, the Delaware River’s largest supply water to and drain water from them. tributary, forms the western boundary along the northern section of the District. Schuylkill River Non-Attaining Table 1. Stream Quality in the tributaries in the Montgomery County section of the District 7th Congressional District of include Gulph Creek, Crow Creek, Indian Creek, Pennsylvania, 2008. Skippack Creek, Stony Creek, Doe Run, Donny Brook, and Schoolhouse Run. Within the 7th District in Chester Quality Class Stream Miles % County are Taylor Run, Plum Run, and upper Chester Creek, plus lowermost Valley Creek along the Ordinary 450 54.5 Montgomery/Chester County boundary and lower Non-Attaining 231 28.0 Brandywine Creek along the Delaware/Chester County High Quality 131 16.0 boundary. Exceptional Value 12.5 1.5 All 824.5 100.0 East of the 7th District, virtually all of the remaining watercourses in Philadelphia County and southern Bucks Typical Streams of Ordinary Quality County are Non-Attaining , as are the majority of streams About 450 miles of ordinary streams, just over half in southeastern Montgomery County including nearby the total in the 7th District (54.5%, compared with Indian Creek, Mill Creek, Plymouth Creek, Diamond Run, 50% of streams Statewide), currently meet typical Sawmill Run, and upper Stony Creek. categories of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) water quality Just outside the District in Chester County are major classification---neither highly polluted nor associated segments of two Non-Attaining waterways, each known as with resources deemed worthy of special protection. Valley Creek. Farther from the District are Non-Attaining These streams typically support or contribute to streams of the Red Clay Creek, White Clay Creek, and fisheries, although some of them have experienced Big Elk Creek watersheds in southwestern Chester serious degradation of their aquatic biota. County. th Non-Attaining (Polluted) Waterways Within the 7 District most direct discharges from The 231 miles of Non-Attaining streams represent 28% of industrial and municipal point sources have been the District’s streams, as compared with 19% of controlled to some extent, but not eliminated entirely, and assessed streams across the Commonwealth as a they play a role in preventing the attainment of whole. These waterways have been classified by designated uses in the impaired waterways. The PADEP as not attaining their designated uses at the principal ongoing threat to water quality today in the present time. That is, they are human-polluted District consists of general urban runoff bearing waterways not supporting the designated uses that they pollutants from roads, pavements, businesses, lawns, otherwise should support (for example, Warm Water and residences. The polluted water in Non-Attaining Fisheries). Polluted waterways comprise all of the segments of some small streams may become Delaware River and Schuylkill River mainstem segments sufficiently diluted by tributaries that designated water in and near the 7th Congressional District. The Delaware uses can exist downstream, but the more typical pattern River’s tidal estuary forms part of the southernmost is for water quality to decrease downstream across the District border next to the State of Delaware. The larger entire metropolitan region. Forested riparian buffers, the degraded streams in the Delaware County section of the wider the better along the stream banks, can help greatly District include non-tidal segments of Naaman Creek, 2 in protecting stream quality, but they typically are not quality in EV streams today is supposed to be protected required by local ordinances across the District. against