Post a commentPennsylvania should annex the channel. Currently, Delaware owns the full width of the river, up to the New Jersey low tide line. When this line was drawn, the three counties that now make up Delaware, were given to William Penn, for the purpose of ensuring his colony free access to the ocean. I say, give the river, shore to shore, to Pennsylvania, from Marcus Hook all the way to the ocean at the mouth of the bay.
As a New Jersey resident, I for one am tired of paying for Pennsylvania's economic development at our expense. The DRPA, funded by NJ residents through tolls and Patco fares, has become a tool for Philadelphia and Pa development. Rendell and Spector want it all their way. Enough is enough>
What a hack Corzine is, lackey of the North Jersey special interests. Dredging the river benefits South Jersey, its Delaware River ports and its related industries. Remember that this election day. As a South Jersey resident, I fully support the project.
This is just another Rendell move to shove dredging down NJ throats without looking at the environmental consequences. Pennsylvania gets the deep water shipping, New Jersey gets the sludge. Sure, New Jersey has been taking Pa. BULLS$%T for a long time. I guess Pa isn’t use to being told NO. Shame on the Enquirer for supporting the dredging without New Jersey and Delaware’s support!
Environmentalists often have their arguments mixed up. Dredging the river may turn up old sediments, but isn't removing them from the river a good thing? Plus, increased shipping equates to increased rail usage, which reduces emissions from trucks (see article on NS expansion at Navy Yard). How is that a bad thing?
Corzine was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, in NYC and N Jersey's economic interests are Manhattan's interest. Do not believe this in anything else than a fight to the death for shipping. The Panama Canal will expand its capacity to allow larger container ships to come direct from China and the entire Pacific Rim, by passing the port of LA. The warehousing, trucking and logistics business about to hit the EAst coast is incalculable. S Jersey is a part of the DRPA, the ports of Camden and Philadelphia are consolidated there. A new port expansion on the Jersey side just broke ground and will generate 1000's of jobs for NJ. It will generate even more if the channel is widened and the Pacific Trade comes through. Read the article about the intermodal expansion of the Rail Road yards at The Navy Yard in the business section, The Crescent project, New Orleans and the Gulf ports are lining up for this trade. We need this to take advantage of the natural geographic capacity for global trade in our river and from there to the mid west and Canada. It is a gold rush.
new Jersey has fought the dredging for one reason. A deeper Delaware river will put NY harbour out of business. That is why over 90% of the Delaware Riverwatcher's money comes from NY. The founder of Riverwatcher's is married to a former board member fo the NY Port Authority. Corszine is based in north Jersey. ETc. What is not generally known is the State of pennsylvania owns the river bottom to the low tide point on the jerey side of the river. In reality, Jersey has no say. The fact that the Delaware is suing shows how deeply the Bidens, father and son, are in debt to the environmental extremists. A little know fact as well: The Delaware river is the only east coast harbour that is mud. All the other major harbours have bedrock at 40 to 50 feet. The Delaware river is mud down to nearly 200 feet except for three rock ridges near the PA Del line. Dredging the harbour to a deeper depth would make the Delaware river the major import export point in the eastern US. It would in fact reverse the the relationship between NY and Philly as trading points. NY passes Philly when the Erie canal opened the mid west to shipping in the 1820's. Dredging the Delaware River can and would reverse that relationship. Instead, NJ and the environmental activists are trying to pull a tony suprano. dredge baby dredge!
RMW:
PA is paying for this and it would benefit NJ as well. Consider the new port expansion in Paulsboro. Get it straight - dredgng is good for NJ and the environment.
"Dredging the harbour to a deeper depth would make the Delaware river the major import export point in the eastern US..."
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...Uhh...not sure how this argument would read in Elizabeth or Baltimore... except perhaps to gales of laughter.
Philadelphia is still sixty miles upstream - one of the things that killed the looney "Fast-ship" project of the late 1990s (when these dredging fights began) was not the impracticality of the river itself (nor even the idea of small hydrofoil cargo ships at the mercy of North Atlantic winter storms) ...but the fact that any ship coming into a dredged Philadelphia-Camden -still- has to come all the way up the Delaware Bay then Delaware River at greatly reduced speed (and thus money).
It's not for nothing that New York gained primacy over Philadelphia right around the time the steam engine was invented!
This isn't PA screwing NJ it's wuite the opposite. your moron governor is nothing but an errand boy for north jersey interests that, as always, are trying to stick it to Philly. Just dredge it, NJ doesn't give a damn about the environment, only screwing Philadelphia. We should have competitive access to the ocean.
Put it to a referendum and I am sure there are about 8 people complaining about this. Makes nice press for the politicos. There are plenty of hacks in NJ and DE to sink this worthy project. These are the same ones who will complain when all the longshoreman and warehouseman are out of jobs.
Timmy, as things stand right now, any potentially toxic sediments are entrained in the river bottom and pose no threat, either short- or long-term. Dredging would dislodge them, and currents would stir them and keep them from re-entrainment for a long time (measured, I believe, in years), during which time they would be doing harm to the aquatic, estuarial and shoreline environments that would take decades and maybe centuries to mitigate. So it would NOT be a "good" thing to dredge them out; the dredging wouldn't remove most of them, it would just release them to the environment. That said, it is not clear whether such entrained sediments exist in such quantities as to be a problem; most studies indicate they would not be. The environmental groups arguing against dredging are preferring to err on the side of extreme conservative caution. I consider myself to be a supporter of the environment, but from my examination of the situation, I believe the correct choice for the region is to dredge. This should be done with continuous monitoring of the environment for the feared sediments, with a plan to cease dredging operations if they do turn out to be a problem.
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