The PA Environmental Council will lead a cluster of watershed groups in a multi-year initiative to protect and restore critical sources of drinking water in the Delaware River watershed funded by the William Penn Foundation.
In all, more than 40 of the nation’s leading environmental and conservation organizations will share $35 million from the William Penn Foundation.
PEC is one of eight urban watershed cluster leaders selected to administer this project and will spend three years collaborating with other groups to restore water flows and water quality in order to support greater diversity and populations of aquatic and terrestrial species throughout the watershed.
The PEC team will consist of the Lower Merion Conservancy, Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust, the Tookany-Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association, the Friends of the Poquessing Creek, Temple University Center for Sustainable Communities and Villanova University.
The Delaware River watershed is a strategic focus for the William Penn Foundation because it covers more than 13,500-square miles spanning New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware and provides drinking water for 15 million people.
In addition, the watershed supports a broad spectrum of water-related economic enterprises valued at $25 billion per year, as well as a number of significant habitats. Deforestation from commercial, residential, and energy development, chemical runoff from farms, and stormwater runoff in cities severely threaten the health of the watershed.
The focus of the Philly Upstream Initiative will be the implementation of green stormwater infrastructure “on the ground” and municipal policies to regulate and manage stormwater run-off in heavily populated suburban communities outside of Philadelphia. Covering just 135 square miles, these small watersheds are home to nearly 400,000 Pennsylvanians.
PEC will lead the development and execution of an Outreach and Education strategy to be coordinated with each of the watershed partners.
In the Poquessing Creek Watershed, PEC is working directly with the all-volunteer Friends of Poquessing to develop effective programs and build the capacity and reach of this small group.
Among some of the other organizations participating in this program are the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Open Space Institute.
Across the entire Delaware River watershed, the goal of this project is to permanently protect more than 30,000 acres, implement more than 40 restoration projects, pilot new incentives for landowners and businesses, provide replicable models for other locations in the watershed, and develop long-term water quality data for the watershed at an unprecedented scale.
For more information, contact Patrick Starr by sending email to: pstarr@pecpa.org.
(Reprinted from the Spring issue of the Forum newsletter from the PA Environmental Council.)
