PHILADELPHIA, PA — The William Penn Foundation announced more than $40 million in new funding for the Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI), which stands among the country’s largest non-regulatory conservation efforts to protect and restore clean water. The DRWI is a collaborative effort involving 65 non-governmental organizations working together at an unprecedented scale to protect and restore clean water in the Delaware River watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware. As the lead funder to date, the William Penn Foundation’s investment in the DRWI now totals more than $100 million.

In the Delaware River watershed, about half of the pollution in the system’s waterways is the result of nonpoint source pollution from myriad places, and therefore inherently difficult to address through regulation alone. Rapid population growth and resulting urban and suburban sprawl are driving significant impacts to the watershed by shrinking and fragmenting forests that are critical to protecting clean water. Runoff from paved surfaces and agricultural fields carry pesticides, chemicals and other toxins into streams and rivers. These growing problems will threaten drinking water for millions of people every day if left unaddressed.

“When we led the creation of the DRWI, our intent was to serve as a catalyst for accelerated watershed protection in our region,” said Janet Haas, chair of the William Penn Foundation. “We wanted to build a framework that would harness the enormous capacity of conservation organizations to work together on a shared approach, and to see whether that critical mass could affect greater change. The result is a model that will not only have an effect in the Delaware River watershed, but also will provide a model that can be replicated in other watersheds tackling similarly complex issues.”

Launched in 2014, the DRWI mobilized local and regional organizations to collaborate at an unprecedented scale in an effort to accelerate conservation. The DRWI is guided by strong science and data and partners methodically assess water quality by monitoring more than 500 sites in the watershed. The resulting data drives decision-making. Over the past four years, DRWI partners have initiated projects that collectively will strategically protect 19,604 acres and restore an additional 8,331 acres to reduce the impacts of pollution.

Equipped with the learning and data from the past four years, organizations receiving this additional $42 million, three-year investment will build on the initial successes of the initiative to protect and restore an estimated 43,484 additional acres and continue science-driven, data-informed efforts to secure clean, abundant water in the watershed.

“Our extensive monitoring produces real-time data on water quality, and the tools developed through the DRWI have essentially created a feedback loop where we can analyze the potential impacts of projects across the watershed in order to pinpoint areas of greatest potential change, and measure whether our efforts had an effect on the water,” said Roland Wall, senior director for environmental initiatives at the Academy of Natural Sciences. “Eventually, we can amplify those results to mobilize widespread action grounded in high-quality science.”

Partners working collaboratively in the Middle and Upper Delaware River region include the Brodhead Watershed Association, Delaware Highlands Conservancy, East Stroudsburg University, Natural Lands, Orange County Land Trust, Pocono Heritage Land Trust, the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and The Nature Conservancy – Pennsylvania.