TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post June Donofrio helps prepare the boat to leave the riverside marina.

TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post Jerry Donofrio calls this spot a "speed bump" or dangerous spot on the river.

"It can't happen by itself," Donofrio says. "It needs someone with vision and foresight, someone with a plan."

The dredging controversy comes at a critical time for many of the local waterfront development projects, all of which are in the early planning stages. All face major obstacles: funding, environmental cleanups, even disagreements over how much more riverfront land should be developed.

"Our goal should be that people can really use and enjoy the river in urban areas...and this (dredging) project doesn't get us any closer to that," said Mary Ellen Noble of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group.

Since Colonial days, the Delaware has been a working river dominated by businesses that relied on it to transport supplies inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Today, it supports the nation's fourth-largest port, drains a huge industrial complex, houses the country's second largest petroleum refining center and provides drinking water to more than 300,000 South Jersey residents.

Its 120-mile navigational channel...which includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware...is of great interest politically and economically to three governors, 839 mayors and dozens of county, state, federal and regional officials.

Since World War II, the Army Corps of Engineers has had free reign over the river's channel as it routinely dredged to maintain the current depth. So the corps was unprepared for the environmental backlash over plans to deepen the river by five feet.

Local officials also oppose plans to dump dredge spoils on three sites designated by the Army Corps in Gloucester and Salem counties. Both the corps and the Delaware River Port Authority insist there are no suitable dump sites in Pennsylvania or Delaware.

Gloucester County Freeholder Robert Smith isn't buying that.

"We won't allow our county to become a dumping ground for environmental problems," he says.

"The Army Corps and the port authority will face stern opposition to their plans to desecrate our land with contaminated dredge spoils from the Delaware River project." In Logan Township, where the council has voted to oppose dumping dredge spoils along the town's riverfront, Mayor John Wright says expanding three existing 20-foot high dumping piles for spoils could hurt river development opportunities for decades. The dredging would create dumps as high as 70 feet, he says.

"That's another 50 feet of mud. That's too much,'' Wright says. "There's some places down there that would be ideal to build houses on the river, or condos, or maybe even something like West Deptford has planned.''

The dredging project...expected to begin next year...has approvals from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and departments of environmental protection in three states.

Potential roadblocks include a formal review by the Delaware River Basin Commission. The Delaware River Port Authority has similar power because it is the local financial sponsor. But the authority expects to approve the project by the end of the year, says Chairman Manuel Stamatakis. He predicts the authority's share...paid for by bridge tolls...will be less than $70 million.

Another dredging roadblock could be a court fight, which delayed dredging in New York harbor five years ago. Opponents of the Delaware dredging so far haven't said if they plan to sue.
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