You’re invited….

…. to come along as I travel through some interesting parts of the Delaware River watershed over the next week or so. You’ll see some rivers, some bay and some ocean. Some pretty things and not-so pretty things. This river keeps on rolling! Let’s roll with it for a while.

First off, what exactly is a watershed? And the Delaware watershed?

Simply, it’s the land where all the water that comes from that land drains into the Delaware River. It seems pretty arbitrary and has nothing to do with political boundaries and everything to do with geography. Most land isn’t flat, and water flows down hill. So rivers (as youngsters they are usually streams) start in hilly — even mountainous — places. Most often, the water runs down one side to one river and down the other to another river. Sometimes, especially where there are lots of hills, those rivers can join up.

One of the larger tributaries of the Delaware is the Schuylkill River. Most people familiar with the river know that it flows into the Delaware in Philadelphia. But it starts from two different places way up in coal country in Schuylkill County, the east branch near Tuscarora, and the west branch near Minersville. Those two branches join up in Schuylkill Haven. More waters gather as the Little Schuylkill joins up, then Tulpehocken Creek, then the Wissahickon Creek.
And those are the bigger ones. There are other, smaller creeks that drain into the Schuylkill.

Think of it as your body’s blood-supply system: little capillaries in your hands or feet find their way to bigger veins as they approach the heart. Our bodies pump that blood back out into our body. If you take this metaphor a bit further, the water system will circulate through evaporation and rain (and what we use) to fall back to earth to find another system to find its way back to the ocean.

We are concerned about the watershed since what happens far away in Schuylkill County from an oil truck leak or too much fertilizer on farm land, or even a septic tank leak can make its way into water systems that we depend on for clean drinking water.

Above is a map of our watershed from a great collection of maps that the Delaware River Basin Commission has on its website: http://www.nj.gov/drbc/basin/map/

You can see on this map how the river is “between” four states. Also, how the watershed widens across Pennsylvania, and narrows in upper New Jersey. The watershed widens until there are hills that will divide the rain falling on the ground, separating into one river’s watershed on one side and another river’s watershed on the other.

With all the news about water and climate change, this is a good time to get to know your river.