By EILEEN STILWELL
Courier-Post Staff
DELANCO -- When Marie Zimmermann Maerten arrived on Hawk Island in a white pickup truck Saturday, she turned her face to the wind and silently let memories wash over her.
At 82, it was the first time she had set foot on the island, now a peninsula attached to the township. But memories of swimming, boating and even ice skating in that scenic spot, where the Rancocas Creek flows into the Delaware River, were strong.
"Oh my. It was a lot better then," said Maerten, a Palmyra resident, referring to 1918 to 1938, when she was a child and young mother living in the township. Back then, the island was a distant land form. Now the channel of water between it and the mainland has been filled with sand and muck dredged from the Delaware River by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"This is just a jungle now," she said, surveying the thick trees and brush that grow wild on Hawk Island. "I do hope they can fix it and make it a safe place for families."
Nostalgia behind her, Maerten grabbed a pair of work gloves and a plastic bag and joined about 100 volunteers to clean up trash and other debris from the uninhabited, mile-long property.
Last year, concerned citizens in this community of 3,400 organized a similar cleanup to focus attention on the island.
Debbie Rietzen, a township resident and organizer of Citizens United to Protect Hawk Island, is concerned about the composition of the dredging spoils used to expand the island and whether the site will be used as a dumping ground. The state has not dumped there since 1988, but when it did, the air was choked with sand for some time, she said.
Residents need assurance, she said, that toxic material is not being dumped on the island. Then, ownership questions must be settled. Since the state turned the 30-acre island into a 118-acre peninsula over the last 65 years, it claims to own the land.
If that is true, local residents would have little control over future use and dumping would likely continue, killing existing plants and wildlife, Rietzen said.
According to DEP estimates, the state cannot afford $27,000 for five soil borings down to the native soil. As a substitute, DEP officials offered results from tests at another dredge spoils site on West Avenue.
Rietzen wants no substitute and will continue to demand testing of Hawk Island, she said.
Lisa Trible, 29, a township resident, joined the cleanup crew Saturday because she thinks the waterfront land could become a community jewel.
"I grew up here and as a kid Hawk Island was off-limits because it was considered dangerous," she said. "Once in a while, my sister and I were allowed to come to collect bugs. But if we could resolve some of these issues, we could take charge of it and turn it into a safe haven where parents could bring their kids."
