The News Journal had an article on Sunday that tries to describe the current state of local environmental concerns about dredging this river. And this is a good article — to the extent that it provides a summary of the arguments against the dredge. I’ve still not seen any evidence provided — either in the form of a competing EIS or challenged sections about these concerns. But I still am agnostic on this project and not really interested in taking either side.
I am wondering here is there wasn’t a big, missed opportunity for some of the dirtiest areas in this river. It seems to me that an approach that would have traded permit approval with, for instance, Federal help in strong-arming the Deepwater site to clean up may have been a net win. Or conditioning permit approvals on specific habitat protections/expansions as part of the project. Or on ensuring that water/sediment flow is managed to ensure that habitat/wetlands are not damaged. After all, the vast majority of the benefits of deepening this river redound almost entirely to Pennsylvania, who has been doing the strong arming on this thing. There were likely alot of ways to get more environmental protections out of this for the Delaware portion during those years of review and delay. Not extracting some projects that may act to enhance or protect the river looks pretty shortsighted from here — as it looks as though the courts may just let this happen.
And while the court proceedings may take some time, it looks as though the Obama Administration has not provided any funds for this project in their latest budget. They didn’t provide any funds last year, either, but those funds were restored by Congress.