Delaware River

DOVER, Del. - State environmental officials said they expected more than 2,000 volunteers to join in Delaware's Coastal Cleanup. The 26th annual cleanup will take place Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon along 97 miles of Delaware River and ocean shorelines, as well as wetland and watershed areas. More than 40 sites in New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties are targeted this year. Last year's cleanup volunteers collected more than 10 tons of trash. - AP

Ten months after canceling a vote on natural gas regulations that would have allowed drilling in the Delaware River watershed, a commission with oversight of water issues in the region remained largely mum on what will happen next. On Wednesday, at its fourth meeting since that canceled vote, none of the five members - representing Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and the federal government - on the Delaware River Basin Commission offered comment on the matter. Asked for an update after the meeting, commission chair Kelly Jean Heffner, deputy secretary for water management at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said only that "we believe we've completed our technical discussion.

Rescue officials in Tinicum Township, Delaware County, on Monday recovered the body of a 65-year-old Philadelphia man in the Delaware River, about a day after he was last seen swimming near the Anchorage Marina in Essington. A police news release identified the man as Huber Ellmore and said relatives reported that he left a family barbecue at 9:30 p.m. Saturday and went to his boat, which was docked at the marina. He was last seen swimming near the marina at 2:30 a.m. Sunday. The body was recovered near the docks at 11:30 a.m. Monday.

SANFORD, N.Y. - Back when Elizabeth and Margaret Davidson were little girls playing along the West Branch of the Delaware River, a ball, maybe, would float away. And they would say, "Guess it's headed for Philadelphia. " Decades later, that notion has taken on volumes of new meaning. The Davidsons' bucolic town about 235 river miles upstream of the Ben Franklin Bridge has become a flash point for the expansion of natural gas drilling to New York - and after, to northeastern Pennsylvania, the state's next frontier for hydraulic fracturing.

Earlier this year, digital equipment at the Black Rock dam in Phoenixville recorded a momentous occurrence: three American shad adults swimming by, presumably headed up the Schuylkill to spawn. They had made it past five dams - one that had been breached and four with fish ladders installed in recent years. "It's been almost 200 years since an adult American shad has been that far up," said Philadelphia Water Department biologist Joe Perillo. The find was a bright spot in what has turned out to be a stubbornly elusive goal in the Delaware River basin - the restoration of American shad.

SHAWNEE-ON-DELAWARE, Pa. - With the fog still thick over the Delaware River, Gov. Corbett, joined by about a dozen state officials, all in kayaks, pushed off from the Pennsylvania side Friday morning for a 10-mile float downriver. It was Day Two of Corbett's 23-mile paddle along the Delaware, meant to promote tourism and highlight Pennsylvania's natural resources. "Hey, look at that," said Corbett, briefly breaking the silence on this undisturbed stretch of the middle Delaware in the 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

SHAWNEE-ON-DELAWARE - With the fog still thick over the Delaware River, Gov. Corbett, joined by about a dozen state officials, all in kayaks, pushed off from the Pennsylvania side Friday morning for a 10-mile float downriver. It was Day Two of Corbett's 23-mile paddle along the Delaware, meant to promote tourism and highlight Pennsylvania's natural resources. "Hey, look at that," said Corbett, briefly breaking the silence on this undisturbed stretch of the middle Delaware in the 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Anglers will be casting their lines in the Delaware River on Saturday hoping to land the biggest catfish - and cash. Cabela's King Kat Tournament Trail is based starting today at the PPL Park and Boat Ramp in Chester. Registration is at Harrah's Casino. Organizers are expecting more than 50 boats to compete. About $5,000 in cash prizes will be distributed to the top 15 percent of the field. Product prizes will also be awarded and there will be giveaways to the crowd. The event is open to the public.

Canal Street in Northern Liberties is a forgotten few cobblestone blocks that zigzag past a meat warehouse, littered lots, and empty factories. It follows the course of the old Cohocksink Creek, used by mills and tanneries in the days of William Penn. Today, not many people even know that a street wends its way behind the George L. Wells Meat Co. in the 900 block of North Delaware Avenue. But a plan in the works would turn Canal Street into the focal point of a major development of restaurants, entertainment venues, and shops.

"The commission has allowed Google to buy its way out of trouble for an amount that probably is less than the company spends on lunches for its employees and with no admission it did anything wrong. " - John Simpson, privacy project director for Consumer Watchdog, on the Federal Trade Commission's record $22.5 million fine for Google Inc.'s privacy violations.   "A lot of our friends from the other side of the river didn't want to see this happen. To our dear friends across the river, we got it done!"