BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
59 New Jersey and out-of-state conservation and civic organizations have joined in a letter to President Obama asking him not to allow his administration to allocate more money for the Delaware River deepening project.
The groups see the Army Corps of Engineers project to deepen the river from Delaware Bay to north of Camden as environmentally destructive and economically wasteful. Deepening is currently being done off Delaware.
Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper said, “The legal and environmental precedents being set here on the Delaware River are already reverberating across the country; the Army Corps is now attempting to smother States rights and sovereignty on the Savannah River using the same model it has been implementing here on the Delaware River.
“There is expert data and reports demonstrating the environmental harms and the economic losses deepening the Delaware River poses for our region and the nation, it would not be appropriate for the President to stifle the public discourse or circumvent the legal process by providing direct Presidential funding as Senators from Pennsylvania are seeking,” van Rossum added.
