The Long Goodbye Part One

This is your second-to-last newsletter from Delaware Currents.

But we can still stay connected through my new venture: megunlimited.com

I hope you have all remembered to stop sending me automated payments, though if you haven’t, I suppose that it will just bounce back to you after my account is closed.

Before I get to the ending, let me sound the trumpets for a grand story by freelancer, Carolyn Jones. She’s written a lovely piece that follows a little-known stream, the Assunpink Creek, which runs through the middle of New Jersey, and its struggles with the human-engineered landscape.

Stories like this are a big reason why it’s so hard to leave Delaware Currents.

Leaving and closing brings lots of emotions — grief to be sure and a touch of “flabbergastedness” that my little website-that-could managed to get under the hood of the Delaware River and share that understanding with so many of you.

There is gratitude — for all the people who have helped along the way. I’m name checking some organizations, but it’s not really the organizations, it’s the people inside them who have been great to work with.

I have said before that one of my biggest debts is to the Delaware River Basin Commission, but not to that entity itself, which can be very slow to make decisions that benefit the watershed (blame the politically sensitive governors), but rather to the staff, administrators, scientists and engineers, who have given freely of their time to help me understand what my stories have been about and why I need to tell them.

And even more: to its various advisory committees, which are open to the public.

Members come from all aspects of the river, including advocacy groups; representatives of the four basin states and sometimes New York City; academics; the various water supply businesses both public and private; various agencies of the federal government; and interested stakeholders from business and industry.

They gather in scheduled meetings which you can attend via Zoom. They debate, argue, and then agree on what to put forth to the DRBC for action. Those debates have been enlightening!

I encourage you to take advantage of all of these meetings to understand the issues facing the Delaware River. You’ll hear lots of different points of view and get a better understanding when you look at issues with more than one lens.

OK. There are more thanks, and more organizations to help you understand the river and the people who are looking after it.

The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary keeps its eye on the estuary, of course, and combines science with public participation. As it says, ” Connecting people, science and nature for a healthy Delaware River and Bay.”

Stroud Water Research Center, like PDE, combines science with public participation but its focus is on freshwater, which of course, is all the water in the watershed.

The Coalition for the Delaware River Watershed looks to unite all the organizations working to improve the health of the Delaware and find support for that work at the state and federal level.

CDRW was originally set up with funding from the William Penn Foundation. A quick nod to the foundation, which made such an amazing impact on the watershed in the 10 years it was funding all sorts of projects (like mine). Now its focus is on Philly and there’s plenty of good work to be done there!

And there’s a host of academic institutions that are also working to improve our understanding of the river and especially what effect climate change might have on it and the communities that depend on it. If you attend one of those advisory committee meetings, you’ll see them, front and center. (Yay science!)

• NOAA Northeast Regional Climate Center, Cornell University
• Rutgers Climate Institute
• Columbia University Water Center
• The Water Center at Penn (Pennsylvania University)
• Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University

I mentioned in a previous email some local journalism organizations that might help keep you informed, but neglected to mention some with a wider view like Yale 360, Inside Climate News and Grist. All of these earn a mention here because there is no pay wall.

Now, you have your homework. Let me know how it goes!!

Thanks for reading,

Meg