PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future

Tullytown Landfill / photo by Brad Maule www.phillyskyline.com

Sept. 9

The Flora and Fauna of the Delaware River

By Kellie Patrick Gates
For PlanPhilly

The Delaware River unfurled itself before us - a shiny ribbon glinting in the morning sun of a perfect September day.

Brad Maule - the founder and editor of www.phillyskyline.com - and I would spend the next six hours touring the river with Delaware Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum and her organization's citizen action coordinator, Fred Stine.

Our journey began in Bucks County, at Tullytown's D&S Marina. A mountain of trash and dirt rose up across the water - the Tullytown landfill.  Seagulls swooped as giant yellow dump trucks worked on the pile. Strips of brown plastic draped over one portion resembled the lines of a tilled farm field. 

New Jersey Transit / Brad Maule

As Stine brought the boat's engine to life, van Rossum said she's worried about what's going into the “mountain” - there's a debate raging over the acceptance of waste with low levels of radioactivity. 

When your job title is also a pledge to protect the river, you worry a lot.

As we motor on, the riverbanks are lined with sand and trees, cement or boulder-based bulkheads, hulks of industry present or past, and the lawns of homes - some newish and modest, others grand, old estates that inspire "what-if" daydreams. (Lawn is not a natural state, van Rossum said. It produces run-off. Besides, the flood plain is no safe place to live – even with flood insurance).


Delaware River yacht club / Brad Maule 

Two tugboats that dwarf our vessel are in turn minimized by an enormous tanker, the Nord Mariner, as they push it toward shore. (This gets van Rossum talking about the controversial river dredging project, which she sees as one of the biggest current threats to the river.)

"Look!" said Maule, who's spent a lot of time on the river this summer. http://phillyskyline.com/summerofthedelaware/  We were still in Bucks County, but the Philadelphia skyline appeared as a blue-gray apparition on the horizon.

"It's ugly, isn't it?" van Rossum asked.

It looked beautiful to me - like a collection of uncut silver topaz crystals.


Port Richmond Power Station / Brad Maule

"I see the skyline as a symbol of the source of a lot of pollution and tremendous damage," van Rossum said.  She knows her perspective is unusual: "I'm looking from the river out."

We slip past the mouth of the Poquessing Creek and into Philadelphia.

I had asked van Rossum to point out threats to the river, and also, signs of hope.

(A future story will cover van Rossum's concerns for the river and the steps her organization is taking in response.)

When your trip begins at a landfill and your guide is an environmentalist, you can expect to hear about the threats first. But as the boat moves along the river, van Rossum's optimism starts to show.

Pilings in front of SugarHouse site / Brad Maule

The decaying hulks of industry past - vacant, sometimes long-abandoned buildings and decaying piers - fill both her and Stine with hope. "These are opportunities," Stine says.

Generally speaking, van Rossum says, new development is best located where old development still stands - provided none of the river is filled in. (That doesn't mean she won't fight any construction project in the flood plain.)

Within much of the city limits, the variable shoreline is more gray than green - but there are vibrant exceptions, and the old piers we see from the North East's shore to the mouth of the Schuylkill really delight van Rossum. Even just off the edge of the busy city, the piers look much like little nature parks.

Rubble on SugarHose site waterfront / Brad Maule

Glossy black cormorants stood on the jagged edges of pilings. One great blue heron chose a similar perch, and later a second swooped over the water, looking prehistoric. The heron was there because below the water, fish and other creatures were using the remains as habitat, van Rossum said.

Other piers now resembled tree- and grass-covered peninsulas. People fish from them, as well as in other spots where the river has begun reclaiming what humans have let go.  On our trip back upriver, a family fishing from a shady bank between Penn Treaty Park and the former PECO power plant waved to us. A few joggers used Penn Treaty trail. From the boat, all that recreational activity seemed very close to the big machines busy at the Delaware Power Station, where part of one building has been torn down, and the work at the proposed SugarHouse Casino site.

Some of what lines the Delaware was puzzling, in one way or another.

In front of the expensive condos of still-under construction Waterfront Square was the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a rusted- or burned-out ferry.

Delaware Power Station / Brad Maule

A significant portion of Penn's Landing was devoted to parking cars - right up to the water's edge.

And there are prisoners on both sides of the river who have some mighty-fine river views.

All onboard agreed prisons wouldn't be built today. But van Rossum said that from the river's perspective, there's not much difference between a prison and a condominium.  Those who live, work and play in Philadelphia now see the river as an asset, she said. But too often, plans still don't consider how we can improve the river, she said.

Camden concrete works / Brad Maule

It was hard at times to figure out exactly where we were – in terms of city geography - along the river, and then an obvious landmark would pop up - the Moshulu and the Chart House, the steeple of Old Swedes Church, the beautiful old mansions of the Navy Yard. And in case anyone didn't catch that last hint, giant, hulking ships like the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy underlined the point.

Hints were sometimes more subtle: It took a second to determine that the scattering of what looked like giant, colorful tops were buoys out of water at the Coast Guard Station.

Stern of the United States / Brad Maule

Although some former industries have died on the banks of the Delaware, there is still much going on. In addition to the enormous tanker, we saw barges. The dimensions of the Port turned perspective on its head: The waterfront there was lined with cranes that I knew were enormous, but somehow, they reminded me of an Erector Set toy.  Along the same lines, stacks and stacks of containers could have been Legos, if I didn't know they were each the size of a semi trailer.  Scope and scale were brought back to reality by the workers who waved their arms at our boat.

It seemed no different at first from the others who had waved at us - from shore, from small motorboats, from more yacht-like craft. But when we waved back, the men's movements took on more urgency - they were signaling us in.

The Linc and the skyline / Brad Maule

"We think there's a jet skier in distress over there!" one said.

Stine pointed the boat south again, and moved it quickly in the direction of the jet ski. Van Rossum climbed onto the bow, and asked Maule to grab her binoculars. Moments later, with great relief, she spotted the man hanging on to the back of the broken-down ski. 

"I repair these things," he said.  He was testing this one when it conked out, and he jumped into the water to try to tow it back to the New Jersey side by swimming it across. It was not working.

He threw us a line, and we hauled him for a few moments before a boat with flashing blue lights came out of nowhere. It was Philly PD. The officers agreed to take over the haul, as their boat was much more suitable for the rescue.

They approached the jet ski, and then the front of the boat opened up, and they pulled man and machine on board. One of the officers aboard Unit #3 said the department has six boats. While that was going on, another boat with flashing lights - red ones - appeared: The Gloucester City Fire Department.

Aker Shipyard / Brad Maule

Once safe, the jet ski repair man asked about The Delaware Riverkeeper - the name of our boat. He promised to check out the website, and Stine once again headed south, to the mouth of the Schuylkill and Block Island - a spot created by sediments from the smaller river, and a popular resting spot for kayakers.

Spotting that, Stine said it was time to turn the boat around.

"What struck me is the sheer diversity of the riverfront itself, where the water meets the land. Active piers, inactive piers taken back by nature, retaining walls, sandy beaches, big unnatural boulders, muddy marshes, tall bluffs, docks, trees," Maule wrote me in an email he sent today along with some of his photos. "The variety of vessels, for a five-hour tour, was pretty impressive too."

My head was full of facts and images that I'm still thinking about as we headed north in the growing heat of the afternoon. And as I watched each bridge full of thrumming cars pass over our heads, I happily noted something else I hadn't realized before this trip: It's much cooler under a bridge.

Contact the reporter at kelliespatrick@gmail.com