With the salt season over for the year I've turned my attention to reacquainting myself with the Delaware. One of my stops brought me to the Trenton Marine Terminal where I found work being done on the Falls Township, Pa. side of the river. Drivers along Route 29 coming through the tunnel may see it but most won't think twice about it.
The township approved the construction of a 1,000,000 square foot warehouse that sits on the 96 acre once Solvay USA ( Previous Rhodia Inc) and Rogers Foam Corporation property. The property sits within the borders of Falls Township just south of Morrisville Pa.
For me, seeing this construction now had me thinking how long is it going to go on for and how will affect the several migratory fishes that call the Delaware River, during the spring, part of their migration path and spawning grounds. Striped bass, American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, an endangered species, and blueback and alewife herring, all migrate up the Delaware River in the spring to spawn. When Trenton started work on the "new" waterfront project near the train bridge last year construction was supposed to be halted during April and May to protect those migratory and spawning fishes.
Above is an image of that project on the Trenton waterfront taken December 14, 2023. There's still much to be completed and will surely continue into spring 2024, when another run of fishes occurs.
My concern is how is the construction of the warehouse in Falls Pa. is going affect the migration. I was lucky enough to be able to speak with one of the workers from the project. While the barges and
tugboats can be seen on the Pa side, there is another, and maybe more disruptive part of the project that happens at the Trenton Marine Terminal (TMT).
Here is what is happening. Around the Philadelphia Airport the Army Corp of Engineers has a location where recycled materials are being loaded onto barges, as seen below. Those barges are pushed by tugboats up the river. Depending on a rising or falling tide the trip can take 4 - 6 hours to make the 34 mile long run. The barges are then docked at the TMT. While they are staged another tug is holding one in place across the river as
the contents are offloaded and then brought, by conveyer belt or trucked, to the site of the warehouse. There is a need to raise the level of the land due to flooding concerns and that site remediation with capping of the soil had taken place starting about a decade ago. So they need a fresh base.
So while boat traffic, like big boats use the Delaware, to get to ports in Philadelphia and as far north as Fairless Hills, these waters at the head of the tidal zone are more of a place where migratory fishes stage before continuing upriver. There will be a consistent disruption in the waters in and around Trenton. The action isn't just south to north, but east to west as well.
According to the worker I spoke with the work is now running 24 hours a day and will continue for the next six months, if everything goes on schedule. A cold winter with ice formation and jams could delay the completion of this phase of the project. If it goes on time, that puts us into May 2024, a solid two months into the most sensitive time for the fishes migration.
Interestingly, when the initial application was filed it was rejected for several reasons. Site conditions, wetland concerns, and the above frog. The Northern Cricket Frog, which calls the lands where the warehouse is being constructed, home. So the plans were stalled until those concerns were addressed.
While I am concerned about the affects this project will have on the river fishes, I'm not sure anyone else does. I'm not even sure if anyone is aware of it. And if they are, is the machine of politics and construction and progress stronger than the concerns of a lowly fly fisherman? I wasn't sure who to
contact. Would it be NJ Fish and Wildlife? The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission? The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service? The local media? Then I found The Delaware RiverKeeper Network. They are very involved in maintaining the quality of the Delaware watershed and I thought a good place to start. I
emailed Maya K. van Rossum, the CEO, Faith Zerbe, the Water Watch Director, and Peter Tran, the social media/IT associate. We'll see if they have any recommendations on how to get this out to the public's eye and if the "right" people who might be interested can be made aware.