TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post A tug boat moves south along the Delaware, while a jet skier zips through in the background.

There are at least 30 private marinas and boat clubs along both sides of the river, but most are already full and don't have slips available for visiting boats. Pennsylvania has a large public marina at the mouth of Neshaminy Creek above Philadelphia that has a limited number of slips for visiting boats, plus a number of smaller public boat launches.

On the New Jersey side, there are four small municipal docks and launches. They have limited hours and are too small to accommodate most larger boats, Donofrio says. New Jersey has no larger public marina in the stretch of river along Gloucester, Camden and Burlington counties. The state also fails to dredge small coves, like the one by the Roebling plant, that could be used by boaters as anchorages, he adds.

At one point, Donofrio steers his boat past a wooded stretch of land in Cinnaminson used mostly by partyers and illegal dumpers. This state-owned land would be ideal for a public marina, he argues.

But Jim Hall, a state Department of Environmental Protection assistant commissioner, counters the state has been out of the business of building marinas for more than 20 years. The state built marinas along Delaware Bay, in Atlantic City, at Forked River in Ocean County and near Raritan Bay in Monmouth County, but the public complained about using state money for this enterprise.

Although boating has grown on the Atlantic coast and along the Delaware, Hall says the state has no intention of building a marina on the Delaware; it's more appropriate for private developers.

He also says the state doesn't dredge coves along the Atlantic and shouldn't begin dredging the few remaining wooded coves on the industrial Delaware.

Some places should be left as undisturbed wildlife habitat, according to Hall. Then there's the issue of where to put dredge spoils, since most riverfront municipalities are now frowning on accepting these sediments.

"It's not a simple matter of going in and dredging an area and there won't be other consequences," he says.

As recreational boat traffic increases, so do concerns about accidents with commercial ships. More than 3,000 large cargo ships and tankers came up the river last year. And that doesn't include the thousands of barges that tugboats ferry upriver each year, which are not tracked by shippers and port managers.

The primary driving force behind deepening the main shipping channel is to allow Philadelphia to compete with other ports. But a bigger shipping channel will mean larger, harder-to-maneuver ships...and more of them, says Ted Dahlburg, who tracks port activity for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

"A deeper channel carries the potential for conflicts with recreational boats," Dahlburg says. "The river is an important generator of jobs (that depend) on those ships moving up and down the river safely."

Donofrio participated in the Delaware Estuary Program, a federally coordinated effort that was supposed to help balance the river's economic, environmental and recreational interest by bringing together people with those interests in the river.

But he came away disappointed, as did just about everyone who participated. The estuary program developed numerous lofty goals about achieving this balance but it lacked focus, and, more important, someone to actually carry out a plan of action, Donofrio says.
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