Once foul smelling and oxygen starved as it flowed past Philadelphia and neighboring cities, the Delaware, from its headwaters in New York's Catskill Mountains to the Delaware Bay, today supports year round fish populations, offering excellent trout, bass, walleye, shad and herring fisheries. Pleasure- craft marinas line waterfronts once visited only by commercial vessels. The river and many of its tributaries are bordered by attractive greenways and parks.
Yes, on some reaches elevated bacterial levels and dissolved oxygen sags can still be a problem, and over the years the lower river has ingested toxic pollutants. But the commission continues to work on ways to correct these ''hot spots." It began looking at toxics in the 1980s, sharing its resources with the basin states and the federal government. A toxics management program is now in its fifth year and is expected to result shortly in new toxic effluent standards for certain municipal and industrial dischargers to the estuary - the tidal reach of the river below Trenton, N.J.
In a recent article, "Federal oversight vital for river," Richard D. Whiteford (Commentary Page, April 22) noted that "reclaiming the Delaware is beyond the power of any single state or local official, even if they were so inclined." He was reciting the commission's 34-year-old creed.
After a killer flood in the 1950s, officials in the federal government and in the four states flanking the Delaware - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware - recognized the need for a regional body with the force of law to oversee a unified approach to the development and control of the river system.
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy and the governors of those four states signed separate legislation creating the commission. Never before in the nation's history had Washington and a group of states joined together as equal partners in a river basin planning and regulatory agency.
