Rift over Delaware River dredging widens

Dueling sides in the bitterly contested Delaware River deepening project took aim yesterday. Environmental groups filed two lawsuits seeking to block deepening a 102.5-mile stretch of the river by five additional feet.

And at the Pier 98 annex near the Delaware River, 500 placard-carrying members of the International Longshoremen's Association and Teamsters' locals rallied in support of deepening the main navigation channel from 40 to 45 feet.

"Dredging equals jobs," John Estey, chairman of the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, told the crowd. "This is the most important project for all the ports along the Delaware River since 1942, when we last dredged to go to 40 feet."

"It maintains jobs, and creates new jobs," said James Paylor Jr., vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association.

Earlier, five environmental groups announced they had intervened in an anti-dredging lawsuit filed by Delaware officials last month. Delaware Riverkeeper Network and four other groups yesterday also sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in federal court in Trenton, seeking to stop the Army Corps from proceeding without state permits.

Jane Nogaki, vice chairwoman of the N.J. Environmental Federation, said it was time "to put the brakes on this rogue Army Corps deepening project," which she said threatened South Jersey and Philadelphia's major source of drinking water as well as fish and oyster populations in the region.

"New Jersey is doubly threatened," Nogaki said. Most of the dredge spoils will be piled as high as 90 feet along the New Jersey side of the river in Salem and Gloucester Counties, she said, and those "toxic spoils pose a groundwater and surface-water runoff leaching threat" as they pile up.

Rubbish, said the union members and politicians gathered on Columbus Boulevard to support the dredging, which they contend will produce more than 8,100 port jobs and nearly 35,000 related industry jobs with an annual salary of $54,000.

Three busloads of longshoremen from Wilmington waved signs that said, "Beau Must Go" and "Say It Ain't So Beau," referring to Delaware Attorney General Joseph "Beau" Biden's lawsuit to stop the deepening project.

"The deeper the river, the more cargo ships can bring in," said Wilmington longshoreman Stephen Rudd, 48. "More people will be able to work, so that everybody will be able to feed their families."

Rudd said that longshoremen jobs are "really good paying," ranging from $15 to $40 an hour. "Some of us make $100,000 a year, some make $30,000 or $40,000, according to the pay bracket," said Alexis Outlaw, a Wilmington longshoreman.

But in this economy, not as many ships have been coming to the Port of Wilmington.

"We have work, but not as much," said Outlaw, 52. "If they deepen the river five more feet, it will help bring in bigger ships that hold more of what we need to keep us going."

New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel called the deepening "an outrageous abuse of power by the Army Corps," with implications for undermining the Clean Water Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and dozens of other state laws.

But dredging proponents, including Pennsylvania, contend the Army Corps has produced thousands of pages of scientific evidence to support its position the project will not adversely affect the environment.

If environmental groups have specific scientific studies to prove dredging will harm the environment, produce those studies, supporters say.

"There are 12,000 pages of scientific data that say there's no bad environmental impact," State Rep. William Keller (D., Phila.) told the rally. "Do we need 12,001 pages? They are dredging Baltimore to 50 feet, New York to 50 feet. Yet nobody is saying anything about those projects."