Industrial desert on river's lower end
Before he died last month, I used to take Dad, an old Navy man and a history buff, to Fox Point after Sunday Mass. We'd spy the towers of Philadelphia and the tanks of Marcus Hook, and scan the Delaware and Jersey riverbanks for ships, boats, and signs of the lost highway that for 250 years joined people from the three states with world visitors, for commerce and pleasure.
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Before he died last month, I used to take Dad, an old Navy man and a history buff, to Fox Point after Sunday Mass. We'd spy the towers of Philadelphia and the tanks of Marcus Hook, and scan the Delaware and Jersey riverbanks for ships, boats, and signs of the lost highway that for 250 years joined people from the three states with world visitors, for commerce and pleasure.
The Delaware is more than a mile across here. And astonishingly empty: We might see one container ship, tanker, or tug, or empty acres of mild translucent waves. Pleasure craft are rare and lonesome.
Old prints show the river crammed with barges, ferries, excursionists, sturgeon and shad fishers, wheat and wood carriers steaming south, imports and immigrants blowing up to Philadelphia. Shriveled pier pilings from vanished lanes still poke the water's edge.
Today's river is walled from the public, by electric rail lines (SEPTA, Amtrak, Norfolk Southern), the eight-lane interstate (95), and the 20th-century heavy-industry plantations.
The water is clearer, but most people who live near will drive to the Shore or fly to the Caribbean before they'll spend an hour on the water next door. The local river economy and infrastructure have shriveled: On the west bank, for 30 miles from Ridley Park to Delaware City, Del., there is just about no place to fuel a powerboat - or launch a canoe, unless you count the little ramp at New Castle, Del., which is older than the United States and sets its own rules.
Even Delaware's Fox Point State Park is surrounded by a rigid fence and warnings to stay off the river; the built-up banks, signs warn, aren't stable.
Our popular parks - Wissahickon, Valley Forge, Ridley Creek - are ex-industrial zones reclaimed from the lost age of creek-powered mills. Fox Point was a would-be industrial park, landfilled by the Pennsylvania Railroad, sealed and replanted after its contamination was exposed, with help from DuPont Co., which ran the next-door Edge Moor titanium-dioxide plant and its chlorine trains.
DuPont's successor there, its spin-off company Chemours Inc., said last week that it will close Edge Moor, idling 320 workers and contractors or moving them away. Commercial Development Co. of St. Louis is demolishing the Claymont Steel mill on the other end of Fox Point that closed last year.
These plants nearly adjoin the old Sun Oil refinery in Marcus Hook, which Sunoco Logistics has cleared to store gases and liquids from the Marcellus Shale fields upstate.
Elected officials hope these ex-industrial sites will attract plastics plants and other Marcellus-fueled industries, replacing all the local auto, chemical, and steel jobs lost to corporate consolidation. It may take more than tax subsidies, or flexible interpretations of the restrictive Coastal Zone Act, to make that a reality.
At least there should be more to watch at Fox Point. Sunoco expects another 100 ships a year will be moving up the river to load fuel at Marcus Hook, as my colleague Andy Maykuth has reported.
It's less likely that the lower Delaware's neighbors will be getting back on the big river anytime soon.
215-854-5194@PhillyJoeD