Visioning

The Upper Delaware River Corridor

Water: the next major issue

By KATE SCHMIDT

I’ve been a resident of Sullivan County for a year now, and while I recognize I’ll always be an “outsider,” I still have come to love this place and call it home.

At Cornell Cooperative Extension of Sullivan County, I spend most of my time as a water specialist. Over the past year, I have spoken with many people and become fairly well acquainted with the water issues in our county. I consider water resource issues to include private wells, community water systems, groundwater aquifers, and the many lakes and streams in our region.

In discussions of contaminated wells or where to find great fishing, the same question inevitably seems to arise: “Who is responsible for care of water resources?”

The answer is you and I. Maybe you’re thinking, “What about all those government rules and regulations out there?” And to a very large extent, the federal and state governments do protect our water resources. Through the Clean Water Act and its resultant regulations, we have cleaned up some of the most egregious pollution in water resources across the country.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. In fact, in some places our rivers are more polluted than they were 10 years ago. The reason for this is a combination of increasing population pressure and the combined impact our personal actions can have on water quality.

The single largest source of pollution today is called “non-point source pollution.” This refers to pollution that does not come from a single point such as an industrial discharge, but instead from things we spread across the land that then wash into our streams, including lawn chemicals and fertilizers, car oil or pet waste. Our everyday activities make up most of the problems we have with water quality.

So what does all this have to do with the Upper Delaware? I think we all recognize that we don’t have nearly the population pressure found further south along the Delaware estuary. Our water resources are still fairly pristine. But what if that were threatened?

Our rivers and lakes are connected to groundwater and aquifers. If we contaminate the streams, you can bet we’ll end up contaminating our wells. And all of the residents along the Delaware obtain their drinking water from groundwater. So what do we do? Well, if the biggest threat to water resources is our everyday actions, then only by acting safer will we be able to prevent problems.

There are tools we can use to learn more and plan around our water resources. We simply need to take advantage of them. Some of our towns already have done so, but water does not obey town boundaries.

We need an Upper Delaware watershed community effort. A vision for the Upper Delaware needs to give some thought to our water resources. Otherwise, we might find our community up a creek.

Kate Schmidt is a natural resources educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension.

This bi-weekly feature is part of a visioning initiative to develop and encourage smart growth as a means of enhancing and preserving the Upper Delaware River corridor. If you are interested in contributing to this column, email editor@riverreporter.com or call 845/252-7414.