Trib team booklet

DEP

ARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL

Delaware’sTributaryActionTeams

funded by:

a Clean Water Act section 319 program

Pond Publishing

Direction and significant editorial and technical assistance provided by:Delaware Dept. of Natural Resources & Environmental Control

Watershed Assessment Section820 Silver Lake Blvd., Suite 220, Dover DE 19904

Lyle Jones - Manager, Katherine Bunting-Howarth, Ph.D. - Planner,Tara Sieber - Project Assistant

The Watershed Assessment Section monitors the health of the State’s aquatic resources and protects the health of swimmers and shellfish con-sumers. The section provides technical support for programs within the

Department; performs soils evaluations; develops water quality monitor-ing strategies and modeling; conducts watershed basin evaluations; and

works to integrate wetlands and watershed management.

Section Manager: John W. SchneiderPhone: 302-739-4590

Email: [email protected]

copyright © 2003 Robert CrimminsPond Publishing & Productions

5012 Killens Pond Rd., Felton, DE 19943 302-284-0200www.pondpub.com

Contents

THE CONSEQUENCE OF NEGLECT 2

THE CLEAN WATER ACT 4

PROGRESS & REMAINING WORK 6

CITIZENS BRING SUIT 8

TMDL - TOTAL MAXIMUM DAILY LOAD 10

WATERSHEDS 12

TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAMS 14

DEL. INLAND BAYS TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM 16

APPOQUINIMINK RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM 18

NANTICOKE RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM 20

MURDERKILL RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM 22

DELAWARE’S TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAMS 24

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Delaware’s Tributary Action Teams

THE CONSEQUENCE OF NEGLECT

In earlier times, natural processes were all that affected the surface water and it was clean everywhere. When water evaporates out of the oceans or is trans-pired to the atmosphere through plants and when it flows through soil, impuri-ties break down. But the balance that the natural processes require has been severely disturbed in America and today our wa-ters are polluted.

By the end of the nineteen-sixties pollution was becoming catastrophic.

Lake Erie was dying. Chemicals and oil slicks repeatedly caught fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Blue-green algae blooms on the Potomac River threatened human health. Lack of oxygen turned stretches of the Delaware River into dead zones. It was intolerable, so Americans acted as citizens of a republic should. In 1972, Congress enacted the first comprehensive national clean water legislation.

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Surface Runoff


The Water Cycle

Ground Water

Infiltration

Precipitation

Transpiration from PlantsSolar

Energy

Evaporation FromLand and Water

On January 28, 1969 a natural gas blowout oc-curred beneath an oil platform off the coast of

Summerland, California. Hundreds of square miles of ocean and thirty-five miles of prime California beaches were eventually covered with oil. In the spring following the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, Earth Day was born nationwide.

One of the landmark books of the 20th century, Rachel Carson’s Silent

Spring’s message resonates four decades af-ter its publication. Shortly before her death in 1964, Carson remarked, “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fate-ful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and . . . Mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland became, “the river that burned” on June 22, 1969 when a

spark ignited low flash point, highly volatile petro-leum derivatives and debris. A fireboat and three fire battalions on railroad trestles fought the blaze that reached fifty feet.

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THE CLEAN WATER ACT

The Clean Water Act became the primary law protecting America’s waters. Its two major goals were, and remain, the complete elimination of polluting dis-charges and making polluted waters fish-able and swimmable where ever possible.

Two features of The Clean Water Act have particular importance to Dela-wareans.

First, it has been termed a “technol-ogy forcing statute” because it requires use of the latest techniques to achieve the best possible results. Essentially that makes cost secondary to results. Second, it delegates key responsibilities to the States which gives considerable control to local citizens. If resolutions are costly it will be because local conditions demand an expensive solution or no one proposed cheaper alternatives.

Although implementation of the act was originally directed toward “point-source” pollution, municipal and industrial waste that flows from a discernible source, increased attention is now also being giv-en to “non-point source” pollution, run-off from neighborhoods, roads and farms.

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The Non Point Source Management Program funds voluntary efforts to reduce pollution. Congress amended the Clean Water

Act (CWA) in 1987 to establish the section 319 Non Point Source Management Program because it recognized the need for greater federal leadership to help focus State and local non point source efforts. Under Section 319, States, Territories, and Indian Tribes receive grant money which support a wide variety of activities including technical assistance, financial assistance, education, train-ing, technology transfer, demonstration projects, and monitoring to assess the success of specific non point source implementation projects.

The Clean Water Act requires states to identify waters not meet-ing water quality standards and to develop plans for cleaning

them up. The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Program provides a process for determining pollution budgets for the nation’s waters that, once implemented, will assure that Clean Water Act goals will be met.

EPA is continuing efforts to improve the TMDL program in or-der to further enhance the quality of the nation’s waters. In 2001

and 2002, more than 5,000 TMDLs were approved or established under the current TMDL rule. The number of TMDLs approved or established annually has steadily increased in the last four years jumping from 500 in 1999 to nearly 3,000 in 2002.


As authorized by the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program

controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States. Point sources are dis-crete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches. Individual homes that are connected to a municipal system, use a septic system, or do not have a surface discharge do not need an NPDES permit, however, industrial, municipal, and other facilities must obtain per-mits if their discharges go directly to surface waters. In most cases, the NPDES permit program is administered by authorized states. Delaware is one of the states authorized to approve NPDES permits which must be renewed every five years.

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PROGRESS & REMAINING WORKProgress has been made since 1972. The

rate of wetlands loss nationally was almost half-a-million acres per year. Now it is less than 90,000. Wetlands are still being lost in Delaware and recent federal actions have left many acres unprotected but today the rate of loss is much less than in 1972 and new wetlands are even being created.

Run-off has been significantly reduced and twice as many people are serviced by modern waste treatment facilities. One-third of the nation’s sur-face waters were fishable and swimmable in 1972. Today it’s two-thirds.

Of course the remaining third represents a huge number of rivers, streams, ponds and lakes and nearly all of Delaware’s surface waters remain impaired, either unswimmable or unfishable or both. Those shown in the map on the facing page in red and yellow either do not support aquatic spe-cies as they have in the past or not as well as they should.

Contact with the water is restricted almost everywhere and warnings about fish consump-tion are so common most of us won’t eat anything drawn from a river or stream.

As the years have passed we’ve leaned to live with it, or rather without it, without many simple pleasures past generations took for granted. We can’t swim in many of the local streams or swim-ming holes and the fish we catch may be contami-nated.

Once believed to be useless and even harmful, the wetlands of Delaware have been found to be extremely important to the

natural function of the land. Wetlands absorb and slow floodwaters, and filter excess nutrients, sediment and other pollutants. Wetlands provide habitat for animals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and insects. Many wetlands are essential to migrating waterfowl, providing a se-cure location where they can feed and rest. In fact, the destruction of wetlands is the leading risk to waterfowl.

Section 404 of the Clean Water Act calls for the protection of wet-lands nationwide and the EPA and many states are in the process

of mandating the restoration of wetlands.

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DELAWARE’S IMPAIRED WATER-WAYS SHOWN IN RED & YELLOW (from the EPA’s water quality report to Con-gress)

AGRICULTURAL BUFFER

WETLANDS DESTRUCTION

The presence of chemicals in some fish has made it necessary for the state to issue Fish Consumption Advisories. In Delaware

these advisories are joint actions of the Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the Dept. of Health and Social Service’s Division of Public Health. Some chemicals and metals tend to build up over time in fish tissue because fish can absorb and concentrate contaminants from food they eat and to a lesser extent, directly from the water. Relatively small quantities of pollutants can present health concerns. The amount of accumulation depends on many factors including the species, size, age, sex, and feeding area of the fish. Since fish can accumulate many contaminants in their fatty tissues, certain species with higher oil content can pose more risk than others when both inhabit polluted areas.

Consumption advisories currently exist for most of Delaware’s water bodies. A few examples are shown here. The complete list

can be viewed at http://www.dnrec.state.de.us/fw/advisory.htm and the list is published in the “Delaware Fishing Guide”. Information is also available by calling DNREC at (302) 739-4506 or the Division of Public Health at (302) 739-4071 or (302) 739-5617.

Water body Species Extent Contaminants Advice

Tidal Christina River All Finfish

River’s mouth to Smalley’s Damn

PCBs, Dieldrin No Consump-tion

Chesapeake & Del. Canal All Finfish

Entire canal in Delaware

PCBs No Consump-tion

Silver Lake, Middletown All Finfish

Entire lake PCBs, Dieldrin, DDT, Dioxin

No more than one 8-ounce meal per year

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CITIZENS BRING SUIT

The goals of the Clean Water Act were to have been achieved by 1985. With the Congressional mandates over a decade behind schedule advocates for the environment looked to the courts. In Au-gust 1996, the Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Widener University Law School, on behalf of the American Littoral Society and its affiliate, the Delaware River Keeper Network and The Sierra Club, filed a federal complaint. It charged the EPA with, “the failure to complete its mandatory duties to identify and then to improve the water quality of hundreds of miles of rivers, streams and Atlantic coastline, and thousands of acres of lakes, reservoirs, ponds, bays, estuaries, and wetlands in the State of Delaware which fail to meet the fishable and swim-mable water quality standard as required by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act”.

A settlement and a consent decree approved by the court followed. Delaware must now establish criteria for the amount of pollutants our waters can bear while safely sustaining certain uses that they have in the past.

To comply with the court’s ruling Delaware’s Department of Natu-ral Resources and Environmental Control, DNREC, developed

a schedule based on Delaware’s drainages and the major tasks that needed to be done. All of Delaware’s forty-five watersheds are within one of five larger divisions, “Piedmont” in the northern portions of the state, “Chesapeake Bay” which includes the Nanticoke River wa-tershed, “Delaware Bay”, “Delaware Estuary” and the “Inland Bays”. The major tasks to be completed for the individual watersheds in all five larger divisions are: 1) Planning 2) Preliminary Water Quality Assessment 3) Intensive Basin Monitoring 4) Preliminary Assess-ment 5) Model Development 6) TMDL Development 7) TMDL Review and 8) Pollution Control Strategy. Implementation of the strategy will lead to the achieving the goals of the Clean Water Act.

The schedule allows ninety months to complete the eight major tasks in each watershed. Planning began in some watersheds as

early as 1996. The process began in others in subsequent years. All watersheds in Delaware are scheduled to have Pollution Control Strategies by the end of 2007.

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Excerpts from the EPA’s web site on the suit filed by the Mid-Atlantic Environmental Law Clinic:

Starting in the nineteen-eighties, environmental groups around the country began suing the EPA for shortcomings they saw in the

TMDL program. To date there are over twenty-five such lawsuits na-tionwide. Since 1990, six lawsuits have been filed against Region 3.

The lawsuits allege that the EPA has not ensured that states meet a number of TMDL-related requirements found in the Clean

Water Act. The most common allegations include:

Not identifying all waters that do not meet water quality standards

Not developing TMDLs for those waters.

Not approving or disapproving states’ Continuing Planning Processes (CPP)

DELAWARE LAWSUIT (status) American Littoral Society, et. al. v. EPA, et. al., No. 96-330 (D. Del.)

In this case (filed June 1996), plaintiffs and EPA signed a consent decree that the court entered on August 4, 1997. The decree sets

out a 10-year schedule for establishment of TMDLs for waters on Delaware’s 1996 303(d) list. The decree provides that EPA will ensure that the TMDLs are established if Delaware does not establish the TMDLs. The decree also includes commitments regarding EPA’s evaluation of Delaware’s 1998 303(d) list, EPA development of a report evaluating and making recommendations regarding Delaware’s monitoring and assessment program, EPA review of Delaware’s Continuing Planning Process (CPP), and EPA provision of lists and TMDLs to the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Section 505 of the Clean Water Act empowers citizens with interest in the condition of America’s waters to bring suit in federal court

when there are violations of “an effluent standard or limitation . . . or an order issued by the (EPA) Administrator or a State with respect to such a standard or limitation”. It also allows suits against the EPA should it fail to perform any duty under the Act. Citizens brought the suits that ultimately caused the establishment of TMDL programs in Delaware and other citizens are working on the pollution control strategies that will be the basis for achieving the goals the programs.


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Human activities, from the digestion of food to the manufacture of goods, involve the use of natural resources and the disposal of waste. It’s a premise that the men and women who wrote and passed the Clean Water Act recognized. They also believed the living generations have a responsibil-ity to preserve their environment. Straightforward criteria, in understandable terms were established to guide regulators as well as every individual, cor-poration and municipality in their use of and affect on the nation’s waters.

The Act begins by making the restoration and maintenance of the Nation’s waters a national goal and it recognizes that the goal will be at-tained when our waters provide for certain uses. Among them are the protection and propagation of aquatic life and wildlife, recreation, public water supply, agriculture and industry. The Environmen-tal Protection Agency and the individual States have therefore based their approach to achieving the national goal on those criteria, the concept that water must remain useful.

Because human life depends on water and economic activity requires vast quantities of water, it’s impractical, perhaps impossible, not to alter the quality of much of the water we use. However, within limits, natural processes are quite effective in cleansing water, and water doesn’t have to be ab-solutely pure to be not only useful, but healthful.

Some degradation of water quality is accept-able but it must be limited. To determine those limits scientists are asked, “What is the total maxi-mum daily load, or TMDL, of a given pollutant a body of water can bear and still be clean enough?”

The total maximum daily load depends not only on the pollutant and its affect but also on the characteristics of the watershed that surrounds the body of water.

Delaware’s Department of Natural Re-sources and Environmental Control is working on establishing TMDL targets for every impaired

TMDL - TOTAL MAXIMUM DAILY LOAD

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Delaware’s Tributary Action Teamswaterway in the state. So far their success has been mixed. Even though impaired waters have been identified and target limits have been set for some, most of the work remains to be done.

The Clean Water Act requires States and Indian Tribes to deter-mine the uses that water bodies must sustain. Swimming, fishing,

habitat and water supply are among the functions that the regula-tions call designated uses.

In order for a body of water to sustain a particular use it must meet certain water quality criteria. States and Tribes adopt both numeric

and narrative criteria. Numeric criteria are important where the cause of toxicity is known or for protection against pollutants with poten-tial human health effects. Narrative criteria are also important and terms such as “free from” toxicity can serve as the basis for limiting the toxicity of waste discharges harmful to aquatic species.

When water quality doesn’t meet the established numeric or nar-rative criteria it is deemed to be impaired. A total maximum

daily load (TMDL) for the pollutants that effect the waterway is then formulated which dictates the amount of those pollutants that the water body can carry while sustaining its designated uses.

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WATERSHEDSA watershed is a region or land area

that drains to a particular watercourse or body of water. Some, such as the Missis-sippi River watershed cover huge areas and include hundreds of other river systems.

The Delaware River Basin includes many constituent watersheds, each with distinct physical characteristics. The com-munities within them often have unique social, cultural and economic concerns that are influenced, sometimes strongly, by topography and water features.

That’s the case in Delaware. All of us in The First State recognize the distinc-tions between Upper and Lower Dela-ware and a waterway, The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, is the physical dividing line between the two. Within those two regions the land consists of multiple wa-tersheds, each with its own characteristics, economies and politics. Most, if not all, of Delaware’s forty-five watersheds have one thing in common. They are impaired, al-though no two in the same way. For exam-ple, the White Clay Creek which includes Newark, the University of Delaware, and a portion of Pennsylvania is contaminated with nutrients and zinc, primarily from a closed industrial site. In contrast, the St. Jones watershed in Dover is polluted with nutrients, bacteria and PCBs.

So in watersheds the natural features define areas of common political interest. The authors of the Clean Water Act real-

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ized that. The communities in every populated watershed share and are connected by the waterways that flow through them so the watershed is not only a clearly defined geo-graphic area, but a practical political district, particularly for environmental issues and water projects.


DELAWARE’S 45 WATERSHEDS

DELAWARE RIVER BASIN

New York

Pennsylvania

New Jersey

Delaware

Dela

ware

Rive

r

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Delaware’s Tributary Action TeamsTRIBUTARY ACTION TEAMS

Residents, business owners, farm-ers and others are being asked to join in the process of cleaning up the waters that connect and enhance their communities. To protect and promote their interests, private citizens are forming Tributary Action Teams in every watershed in Dela-ware. They’re helping to create pollution control strategies that will lead to the res-toration of Delaware’s waters, a return to something past generations enjoyed and future generations are entitled to. In this way, residents are involved at the begin-ning of the process. They recommend the pollution control strategies that their community will be asked to implement.

Before strategies can be developed DNREC must establish TMDL targets for every impaired watershed. It is a de-manding scientific exercise but compared to what must be done to achieve the goal of returning Delaware’s water’s to an ac-ceptable condition, it’s just a small, first step.

Even though it will be difficult, and quite costly, Delaware must act. Congress, and now the courts have demanded it.

The Clean Water Act is federal leg-islation but the State has a responsibility and interests greater than those of the federal government. Landowners and residents of every watershed in Delaware have even greater interests which should be considered, respected and protected. To

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ensure that, public participation is a requirement of both the state and federal acts.

Presenting their interests however, is the responsibil-ity of those who live and conduct business in the affected areas. Improving the water quality of an entire watershed may have significant costs and yield important benefits. That makes it a compelling, political issue.

Obviously it isn’t an easy problem. Important quality of life and rights issues are at stake. Some constituencies are already acting, environmentalists, agriculture and developers among them.

The watersheds in which Tributary Actions Teams cur-rently exist in Delaware are The Inland Bays and Nanticoke River in Sussex County, the Murderkill River in southern Kent County, and the Appoquinimink River in New Castle County. Citizens in these four very different watersheds are at various stages in their development of pollution control strategies.

Team members learn about water pollution and their watershed. Then the teams document the issues, outlining the pros and cons of the various approaches. They hold pub-lic forums in order to hear the concerns and ideas of others. From the dialogue common ground emerges. Values and approaches most can agree upon come to light and become the foundation for the team’s final Pollution Control Strat-egy that will ultimately be submitted to the state.

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The Inland Bays team has led the way. So far they have produced an issues book and two televised public service announcements on non-point source pollution. They have completed their pollution con-trol strategy and the state is now determining how to make it the basis for the final regulations. The Center for the Inland Bays convened the team and is the team’s facilitator. Members include representa-tives from large agricultural businesses and power companies and municipal governments as well as private citizens and their efforts are taken very seri-ously since the health of a thriving tourist industry depends on water quality.

The TMDL regulation for the Inland Bays clearly illustrates the severity of the problem and the cost of compliance. For example, DNREC has deter-mined acceptable water quality will only be achieved when non-point source nitrogen loads from the up-per Indian River are reduced by 85 percent. When the TMDL was established ten waste water treatment facilities discharged into the Inland Bays watershed including the cities of Millsboro, Georgetown, Lewes and Rehoboth Beach. The TMDL regulation calls for the systematic elimination of all point source pollution so every facility has to devise other ways to dispose of millions of gallons of effluent every day. Half are already implementing practices to achieve the goals the TMDL regulation.

Rehoboth Beach was so concerned about the expense they initiated a law suit and the mayor, Samuel Cooper, called it “a huge issue, both envi-ronmentally and financially,” saying it would cost the community tens of millions of dollars. He is right.

DEL. INLAND BAYS TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM

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Improperly maintained septic tanks and drain fields are a source of pollution, particularly in watersheds such as the Inland Bays where

the water table is so high. Among the Inland Bays Team’s recom-mendations was a program to implement a septic system holding tank permit compliance program. In response DNREC instituted a pilot project to locate the holding tanks in the watershed, identify those that don’t comply with the requirements of their permits, and have them repaired or replaced. The result was an improvement in the holding tank permit compliance rate from 51% to 97%. EPA funds will be used to continue this effort. Meanwhile, state and federal programs are funding a voluntary septic system compliance program.

Over sixty Onsite Wastewater Disposal System (OWDS) in-spections have been conducted in the few months since the

program’s inception in August, 2002. Forty-one systems were con-sidered satisfactory, while eleven were deemed unsatisfactory and must be replaced at the owner’s expense. In order to gain an appre-ciation for the need to monitor and inspect septic systems, each of the land owners participated in the assessment process.

1 - Lewes Rehoboth Canal

2 - Rehoboth Bay

3 - Indian River

4 - Iron Branch

5 - Indian River Bay

6 - Buntings Branch

7 - Assawoman

8 - Little Assawoman

32

1

4 5

6 78

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The Appoquinimink River has re-ceived special attention from the EPA since it was the first river in Delaware for which TMDLs were established. Follow-ing the consent decree the EPA promul-gated TMDL regulations for the tidal portions of the Appoquinimink. That hap-pened in 1998. Since then, DNREC began developing total maximum daily loads for the entire watershed. When the State and New Castle County were unable to agree on the TMDL targets, the State turned the TMDLs work over to the EPA to finalize. They plan to be finished by the Spring of 2003.

The Appoquinimink Team has been extremely active. They have a speakers bureau, a monthly newspaper column, a brochure and an issue booklet. Middle-town Middle School students conducted a survey of parents to learn about the public’s perceptions of pollution in their water-shed. Their findings were summarized in a Powerpoint presentation given during the Team’s public forums. The Team has also turned its attention to different storm wa-ter retrofit projects that can be completed in the watershed. Like the other teams, they are developing a pollution control strategy for their watershed, one of the fastest growing areas in the state.

APPOQUINIMINK RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM

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THE TEAM & STUDENTS WORK TOWARD RESULTS

The entire length of the Dove Nest Branch of the Appoquinimink River was surveyed by the students from St. Andrew’s environ-

mental science class and members of the Tributary Action Team. They found over 100 areas where storm water enters the branch. A number of direct storm water discharges came from the Village Brook Mobile Home Park. Adequate open space existed adjacent to the these pipes such that storm water retro-fit structures could be constructed on the property to reduce the nutrient and sediment load of the storm water.

A project to build extended detention ponds for storm water from the mobile home park has been initiated, a plan and budget

for the project have been formulated and funds are being sought through the Non Point Source Management Program established in section 319 of the Clean Water Act.

MiddletownOdessa

Townsend

Appoquinimink R

iver

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Delaware’s Tributary Action TeamsNANTICOKE RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM

The Nanticoke River and its tribu-taries in Kent and Sussex Counties is the largest river system in Delaware that flows to the Chesapeake Bay. TMDLs were developed for that watershed in 1998 for nutrients.

The Tributary Action Team held three public forums in the watershed. The last fo-rum was well attended after the Team ran a series in the local newspaper describing several approaches to help the River. The series reminded the community that one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most biologically rich tributaries needed protection. Troubling symptoms the ads mentioned included al-gae infestations in the area’s ponds, nitrates in the drinking water, and the closure of Trap Pond to swimming. The Team faced many challenges in drafting their Strategy. For one, the water quality in the river de-pends on the quality of the groundwater that supplies it, which, in turn, depends on how the land in the watershed is used. In addition, the main stem of the River is small when compared to the land mass that drains into it. This makes it difficult to connect land use at the far reaches of the watershed to the water quality of the River. Despite the challenges, the Team has of-fered a Pollution Control Strategy. They recognize the inherent problems associated with the watershed and their strategy of-fers what residents of the watershed see as workable strategies.

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Seaford

Georgetown

Laurel

Greenwood

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In southern Kent County, in an area once heavily forested and engaged in shipbuilding, lies the Murderkill River. The team there produced a documentary and distributed fourteen-thousand brochures to publicize their forums. Among the Murderkill watershed’s unique features are Bow-ers Beach, archaeological sites, the birthplace of American Methodism and a rich array of low lands and wildlife. It’s also the home of a major waste-water treatment plant that handles nearly all of Kent County’s waste treatment needs. That makes it unlike nearly every other watershed in Delaware because human and industrial waste from outside the watershed are imported for treatment and dis-posal. It’s one of the many conditions that further complicates the task of devising a pollution control strategy. Fifty-eight per cent of the watershed’s land area is occupied by highly productive farm-land. As more area is developed, mature forest stands along the Murderkill, which now provide a buffer between productive land and the River, are in danger. Strategies that result in significant pollution reductions are needed. Meanwhile the Kent County government has offered evidence the science used to establish the TMDLs for the tidal portion of the Murderkill marsh may be flawed. Their challenge has resulted in a law suit.

Many interests are involved and all sides that offer objections and additional information are being heard. None of the involved parties are daunted or even overly discouraged by the debate because all realize how very difficult and impor-tant the issue is. When multiple interests make themselves heard assumptions are questioned and premises validated or rejected. Consensus can then be built.

MURDERKILL RIVER TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAM

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Murderk

ill River

Harrington

FeltonFrederica

Bowers Beach

Best Management Practices, or BMPs, for reducing the unwanted affects of farming are practices that an agriculture operator can

undertake to minimize the impacts on soil, air, or water resources.

Much of the excess nitrogen and phosphorus that enters the Murderkill comes from agricultural activities. Farmers are en-

couraged, and increasingly required, to engage in Best Management Practices. The best such practices are often part of a system that in-cludes both “strategic” elements such as Nutrient Management Plans as well as “tactical” and operational techniques that add new practices and modify existing ones.

Some of the BMP’s that farmers and livestock growers in the Murderkill Watershed might employ are keeping manure under

cover, proper land application of fertilizer, field conservation practices such as the use of cover crops, filter strips and stream buffers, transport of manure from areas high in nutrients to areas where the nutrient levels are low, composting, soil testing, conservation tillage, and instal-lation of water control structures.

Farmers installing many of these BMP’s are eligible for state and federal assistance for up to 75% of the total cost and low interest

loans are available for the remainder.

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DELAWARE’S TRIBUTARY ACTION TEAMSTributary Action Teams are working through a tricky

yet highly rewarding task. Every month progress is made to-ward developing pollution control strategies that will work. Today the citizens of four of Delaware’s forty-five water-sheds, empowered by the United States Congress and the State of Delaware are actually helping to solve a problem that has lingered for decades and has reduced the quality of life for millions of Americans.

Many of the problems caused by so many decades of neglect can seem insurmountable, but with knowledge and perseverance obstacles fall, one by one. As they fall everyone engaged in the process, every individual in each watershed, working to improve water quality begins to realize not only can they make a difference, they are the difference.

To become involved in one of the existing Trib Teams or to form one in your watershed contact DNREC’s Water-shed Assessment Section at 302-739-4590.

• UNITED STATES •

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DEP

ARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL

DELAWARE

NONPOINT SOURCE PROGRAM

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