But more than 200 miles downstream from that idyllic spot, a wide and murky expanse separates Philadelphia from South Jersey - a geographic and political partition.

For more than 25 years, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have quarreled over a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan to deepen by 5 feet the river's main channel, to 45 feet, from Camden south to the mouth of the Delaware Bay.

Environmentalists have weighed in on endangered habitats and toxic spoils, governors have squabbled and South Jersey residents have protested the mere thought of the stinking river-bottom being piled up in their figurative back yards.

Last summer, in Philadelphia, Gov. Rendell was joined by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady at a ceremony announcing a five-year, $379 million project to deepen the river's shipping channel, calling it a major milestone in ongoing efforts to expand commerce and enhance economic development.

"I consider this to be the most important project in the history of the Port of Philadelphia," Rendell said of the agreement between the Army Corps and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, signed by Assistant Secretary of the Army John Paul Woodley Jr. and PRPA Chairman John H. Estey.

But, although the Army Corps intends to start the project by year's end, some high-powered New Jersey officials are starting to ramp up the decades-long mudslinging over the plan.

"The state of New Jersey is going to fight back," vowed New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney. "We'll wind up in the courts. That's the likely outcome."

The PRPA, which became the project's non-federal sponsor last year, foresees 15,000 to 20,000 new jobs and a deeper channel to ensure that the region's ports stay competitive with nearby Baltimore and Newark.

"The project continues to move apace," said Dan Fee, a spokesman for the PRPA. "There's nothing that makes us think otherwise."

'A $500M hole in the ground'

U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., a longtime opponent of the project, sees plenty of reasons to think otherwise.

The price tag is based on a 1997 tabulation, Andrews said, and it's most likely closer to $500 million now. Job creation from the dredging project would be temporary, and the future of shipping is in 50-foot channels, not 45-foot ones, making the project redundant, he said.

"The economics just don't work," he said. "You're literally putting a $500 million hole in the ground."

Andrews said that only a fraction of the fed's $220 million is available for the project and that Pennsylvania residents would pay the rest.

Fee, of the PRPA, said that New Jersey no longer contributes any money to the project and that $20 million is already available to begin.

In 2007, after 18 months of bad blood between the states, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine dropped his opposition to the project, and Gov. Rendell agreed to drop his opposition to many Delaware River Port Authority projects that would benefit South Jersey.

Part of the agreement was that the DRPA would no longer be the non-federal sponsor of the project and that all the dredge spoils eventually would be taken to Pennsylvania.

The Army Corps claims that it was never bound by any agreement between the states, and will bypass the controversy of finding new spoil sites by using existing federal sites that dot the river in Salem and Gloucester counties.

Jeff Tittel, of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said that Rendell bullied Corzine into accepting a deal, and that now the Garden State will be dumped on again as a result.