Watershed

For years, Darby Creek was the neglected stepchild of storm-water management. Delaware County planners gave higher priority to studying Ridley and Chester Creeks, which faced faster development. But now, as a result of two lawsuits and changing views on watershed management, the creek is getting attention from many directions at once. The county is studying storm-water flow, the state is testing aquatic life, Philadelphia officials are monitoring sewage spills, and a community group is conducting a broad survey on conservation of the Darby Creek watershed.

Some neighbors of Darby and Cobbs Creeks are finding out about a regional survey of watershed health only after they encounter Villanova University graduate students wearing orange vests poking around the creeks in their back yards. To date, the students have surveyed more than 100 bridges and culverts, mostly along tributaries in Delaware County, to gauge the chances of flooding in bad storms. Environmental planners do not know exactly how many obstructions exist. Finding and measuring them in the field is a critical step in creating computer models to predict and ameliorate flooding.

Yesterday, officials and grassroots supporters celebrated the designation of the White Clay Creek watershed as a part of the national Wild and Scenic Rivers System. "Today is a day a lot of us have been waiting for for a long time," said U.S. Rep. Joseph Pitts (R., Chester), who introduced federal legislation making the designation and shepherded it through the House. "Preserving this beautiful waterway is a job many of us have been working on for decades. " Pitts spoke at a small streamside ceremony near the headwaters.

Those tranquil streams you can hop across on a walk in the woods actually make up close to three-quarters of a watershed system, environmental experts say. "All these little finger streams are really the ones that you need to take care of," said Julie Kollar, chairwoman of Horsham Township's Environmental Advisory Board. And because 800 properties in Horsham have them, the township will hold a workshop to teach residents how to make sure the streams stay healthy. The Backyard Buffer workshop is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. April 18 in Hatboro-Horsham High School auditorium, 899 Horsham Rd. Maintaining a stream is easier than it sounds, said Nancy Minich, director of land planning and design for the Heritage Conservancy, which will present the program.

As mallards swam on the far edge of the pond and horses grazed in a nearby field, a group of middle school students scrambled down to the pond to test the water quality. Darryl Smack, a student at Drexel Hill Middle School, stuck a thermometer into the water as other students collected samples in test tubes. Huddled together, they soon were evaluating the pond's pH, or level of acidity, and checking the level of nitrates and phosphates, possibly from fertilizers. The outdoor experiments are part of a watershed awareness program offered by the Pennsylvania Resources Council, the state's oldest nonprofit environmental education organization, which makes its home at Ridley Creek State Park in Edgmont.

Class was just getting under way on the south bank of French Creek in Chester County when a minor scientific dispute erupted. "Tadpoles!" shouted Lex Shontz, a sixth grader, peering into a puddle a few yards up a hill from the stream. "I found hundreds of tadpoles!" "Mosquito larvae," countered Emily Hardy, a seventh grader. "They aren't tadpoles, they are mosquito larvae. See, that's stagnant water, so they're larvae. " At that moment, the water got stirred up, impossible to see into.

THEY'LL JUST ABOUT bend over backwards in public, like a traveling band of Olympic gymnasts, to show people how serious they are now about transparency and honesty. The School Reform Commission, the School District of Philadelphia, the mayor, state education officials - they all say that they understand how fed up people in this city are from the scandals and controversies, from the overwhelming sense that special interests get served first. Ackerman. Archie. Evans.

Trying to keep track of ground-water resources, especially in Pennsylvania, is a thankless job. While the land-use decisions that affect these supplies are made by municipalities, the water pays no attention to state and township lines. In Chester County, no single agency attempts to calculate the short- and long-range impact of development on ground-water supplies. As a result, there is no way of knowing when or if the tap will run dry. In a small section of southern Chester County, all that could change if a study recently released by the Red Clay Valley Association is taken to heart by local leaders, said Robert Struble Jr., director of the association.

On Saturday, dozens of (slightly nutty) friends of the Brandywine Valley Association will take a major plunge as they raise money to help protect the 330-square-mile watershed in Pennsylvania and Delaware. They will jump into a 50-foot-wide section of the frigid Brandywine Creek in the "Make a Splash Polar Plunge," bringing a version of the well-known polar bear clubs to Chester County. "It was my crazy idea," said Jim Jordan, managing director of the nonprofit conservation group that guards the watershed.

Open-space preservation groups are celebrating the imminent completion of a $7.5 million deal to conserve 1,800 acres in Jackson Township, one of the fastest-growing areas of New Jersey. The area is in the Pinelands and encompasses the headwaters of the Toms River, which drains into ailing Barnegat Bay. And it is just beyond the end of a runway increasingly being used for combat training at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Ocean County's largest employer. As such, the deal touches on many of the state's major issues - sprawl, water quality, the economy, and military readiness.