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An early focus of pollution cleanup
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JEF DAUBER/Courier-Post |
The Delaware River's pollution problems were actually well recognized as early as the late 1700s, when crude log pipes would funnel sewage right into the creeks and river.
The river's first official pollution survey in 1799 noted contamination entering the river from ships, sewers and polluted wetlands. Thousands of people died each year from waterborne diseases.
By the late 1800s most South Jersey communities turned to groundwater rather than drink from the polluted Delaware.
As a result of its problems, the Delaware experienced some of the nation's earliest cleanup attempts, including the formation of a commission in 1936 to investigate the river's "gross" pollution problems. That commission led to construction of better sewage treatment plants by the 1950s.
It was far from enough.
The Delaware River Basin Commission was formed in 1962 under a compact between New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York. A big part of the commission's mission was to map a plan for cleanup of the river.
The 1972 federal Water Pollution Control Act provided $1 billion in federal grants and required upgrades to sewer facilities.
The river finally made its dramatic turnaround by the late 1980s, with the completion of regional sewage treatment plants that could nearly eliminate the bacteria that starved the river of oxygen.
"At the time we didn't realize it, but we can look back now and say that that was the turning point," said the Delaware River Basin Commission's David Pollison. "That gross pollution is long behind us."
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