The problem of dredging the Delaware River

In the interests of the social gospel and its concern for the common good, and with no pretense of technical competence, I have a win-win solution for the neuralgic regional problem of dredging the Delaware River. Environmentalists oppose it, saying it will foul the drinking water that is drawn from the river above the salt line. They argue that PCBs and heavy metals will be stirred up and then taken ashore to stand in unsightly mountains. They maintain that wetlands, fish and wildlife would be affected badly.

Economists favor dredging the river so that larger ships can navigate it farther north, bringing jobs and increased trade to the Delaware Valley. Dredging already is being done on a maintenance basis, but this plan, which has been in and out of courts for years, wants to go to a depth of 45 or 50 feet, deeper than most of the river currently is. New Jersey and Delaware are suing to keep from being the dumping grounds, while Pennsylvania, which was slated at one point to host dumping in exhausted coal mines, will not take any of the sand, clay and silt on its territory.

The solution: dredge to 50 feet or more and load the “dredge spoils” onto barges which would take it just far enough out into the Atlantic to be of no danger to the environment or to ocean depths needed for ship passage. Environmentalists would like that less energy would be needed: only fuel for the barges, instead of fuel needed to off-load the material via heavy equipment onto trucks for transport to some area deemed fit to suffer indefinitely from unsightly grey, malodorous mounds 30 or 40 feet high. We are talking about 16 million cubic yards of mud. They would also like that underwater material would merely go back to being underwater, but in a better place.

Economists who have been arguing for dredging say that this would propel the area far beyond its present maximum of 400 ships, 4,000 jobs, 4 million annual tons of products, and $400 million in trade revenue. While they don’t want the river spoils on their front lawn, neither do environmentalists want to see people out of productive work in our hurting economy.

Studies done in 1997 but considered generally still in force claim that dredging can be done safely. The Army Corps of Engineers would oversee the $397 million project. Unions want it because it will generate thousands of jobs. So does the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

Rivers are regularly dredged to counteract the normal filling in of the depths needed for shipping lanes. It is usually done with awareness of the environment. But politics muddies the waters when ports in north Jersey try to hobble in Trenton or Washington this South Jersey effort. Vested interests like these usually collide in state or federal government offices. So folks concerned about the common good of all people, namely those property owners downwind from the unnatural dunes, and those struggling to make and keep good jobs, are used to jousting and arguing the relative merits of such conflicts.

That is why conscientious Christians and others have no problem with subjects as mundane and secular as river dredging being featured in Catholic newspapers which are not afraid of losing their tax-exempt status as non-profits. This is why we have Catholic newspapers. They inform people of any faith of activities affecting the common good, the people at large and what is best for the community. Popes and bishops even before Vatican II have urged baptized and confirmed congregants to take seriously their responsibility for the state. A democracy from the civil point of view will not flourish if people continue to abandon citizen oversight to the vested interests.

River dredging is a good test case for church counsel offered to government through the media to benefit people. It is non-partisan. It does not favor one side only because it is powerful. People who benefit from such counsel, perhaps because they would not have to look at mounds of mud, appreciate church comment. Those who do not immediately benefit, such as those who run medical insurance companies, probably would not like church support of public options in the different controversy of the reform of medical coverage.