TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post Jerry and June Donofrio relax on their boat after crossing beneath the Turnpike bridge.

Propellers churn up roiling clouds of mud as Jerry Donofrio carefully maneuvers his 40-foot motor yacht through shallow Craft's Creek.

There is almost no hint of civilization among the trees and lilies lining the banks of this twisting creek off the Delaware River in Florence.

Just beyond a screening wall of oaks and maples are the rusting water towers and crumbling brick buildings of the abandoned Roebling Steel Mill, a federal Superfund site local officials hope to turn into a commercial center and marina.

The only sounds come from the boat's engine and the rush of water tumbling into the creek from a small canal that once served the mill.

"Could you imagine if this (creek) was dredged and made accessible?" Donofrio asks, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he struggles to keep his propellers from striking the creek bottom.

"This is an example of a place along the Delaware that could move to the extreme; there could be 200 to 300 boaters here."

While others see the Delaware as a waterway of languishing industry, Donofrio views it as a river of opportunities based in large part on recreational boating.

The Willingboro man is founder of the Boater Voter Coalition, a loosely organized and mostly Internet-based group lobbying for change along the river. He discusses his vision for the Delaware during a five-hour ride between Riverside and Crosswicks Creek, which forms the border between Burlington and Mercer counties.

The route is marked by mountainous landfills, stately old mansions, great blue herons and ducks flying over stretches of desolate beaches choked with driftwood. In places, Jet Ski-style craft dart through the wakes of cargo ships; swimmers frolic along sandbars.

The boat, named Jay Dees after Donofrio's initials, noses in and out of secluded coves formed by sand and gravel mining. It meanders past crumbling factories and fledgling riverside restaurants, mud flats and wooded peninsulas with colorful monikers such as Mud Island Shoal, Hawk Island, Duck Island and Kinkora Bar.

The river is a lot cleaner than it was 15 years ago, and people are returning to it as a playground...even if much more needs to be done, says Donofrio.

He contends improving public access is key to attracting boaters from outside the region and building the Delaware as a regional destination.

While many of the Delaware's boat owners travel to the quiet coves and bustling marina nightspots along the Chesapeake Bay, people from that region have no reason to visit here, says Donofrio.

He estimates the river has some 8,000 private boat owners south of the falls at Trenton, a natural barrier of rocky rapids that divides boaters here from boaters to the the north. But the river can be an unfriendly place.

For starters, there are no legal requirements for government advisories about water quality. That's because, technically, there are no public bathing beaches along this part of the river.

Under federal guidelines, the water is considered too polluted to be swimmable. But officials acknowledge pollution levels can vary depending on storms that cause antiquated sewer systems to discharge raw sewage into the river. Without a monitoring program, boaters and others must swim at their own risk, Donofrio says.

He further argues the river holds safety hazards caused by a lack of any programs to dredge tricky shoals or remove driftwood and floating garbage that can seriously damage boats.

But one of his biggest gripes is the lack of boater access on the New Jersey side of the river. Donofrio formed the coalition in 1994 after having difficulty getting access to a small public dock in Burlington City that was frequently locked.
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