Watershed

Not a day goes by without some dramatic turn in the battle over same-sex marriage - lawsuits are filed, criminal charges threatened, legislators consider constitutional amendments, and local officials in unlikely places are inspired to acts of civil disobedience. Keeping track of the shifts can be dizzying, but for Linda Gilvear it's become a daily obsession. As for many gays and lesbians, the furor is more than a news story: It's part of a pivotal moment in history and her life.

In a heavy rainstorm when the streams and rivers in Chester County were flooding their banks, Bernard Sweeney was out in knee-high boots, camera in hand. Hanging on to tree branches and gingerly stepping through the three-foot-high water that had overwhelmed the banks of White Clay Creek, Sweeney snapped pictures of the flooding. "I wanted to record what was happening," said Sweeney, president and director of the nationally recognized Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale.

On a recent morning at the Pennypack Preserve - a land trust containing 720 acres of protected watershed in Montgomery County - a weathered, old snapping turtle with a stegosaurus tail sunned itself on the pavement. This reminder of the prehistoric past seemed a fitting illustration of what officials at the preserve say is a major push to restore the preserve to its primordial roots. Little by little, they say, subtle changes being made in the natural landscape will bring this confluence of stream, wetland, and gently sloping forest to its healthiest possible state.

Jane Fava, coordinator of the Brandywine Valley Watershed Watch program, likes to say that the water in the Brandywine is the same water the dinosaurs drank. When she teaches environmental classes at the Myrick Center in Pocopson - home to the Brandywine Valley Association- she tells middle school students that "except for salt water seeping into the watershed, groundwater is finite, endlessly circulating and recirculating. " "It [water] has always been here, and we can't live without it," she says.

It's the annual pre-Oscar wail: How will the academy fill its actress categories? So how's this for a change? On Feb. 11, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its nominees, there won't be enough slots to accommodate the gold rush of worthy female contenders. "We have a wealth of, for lack of a better word, 'nominatable' women this year," says Jeanine Basinger, chair of the film studies program at Wesleyan University. Their roles are better, too. "We're seeing women on screen who aren't just a device to push forward the story of the hero," says Salma Hayek, a likely nominee for her performance as pathbreaking Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Frida, which she coproduced.

After years of criticism of the state's open-space program, Gov. McGreevey signed a bill yesterday that requires giving top priority to acquiring land in or near flood-prone and watershed areas. State officials said that would get New Jersey out of the "catastrophic relief business" by preventing more development in flood-prone areas. It also will attempt to protect sensitive land essential to water supplies and resources, such as areas near reservoirs, major streams and wellheads.

FAIRMOUNT Park muffed at least part of its handling of a $26 million grant from the William Penn Foundation to restore its five watershed parks. But a recent collaboration of the city, the park and the Fairmount Park Conservancy has saved the environmental education programs at three environmental centers and shows how public-private partnerships can work. The Penn Foundation decided it could no longer could fund the jobs of five environmental educators hired under the Natural Lands Restoration and Environmental Education Program.

IT'S BEEN A little more than a year since this Editorial Board began its investigation into the callous neglect and dispiriting conditions in Fairmount Park and other parks across the city. Since our series "Acres of Neglect" began, significant progress has been made in improving the parks. And yesterday's announcement that the series was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing is, of course, professionally gratifying. But acres of work on the parks still remain.

The sign: A tiny sow bug creeping along researcher Andy Duddleston's muddy fingertip. The meaning: Suburban sprawl and the runoff from fertilizers are affecting South Jersey's watersheds and water supply. Finding a sow bug in a Burlington County stream last week at Laurel Acres Park in Mount Laurel revealed that the water has a lot of room for improvement, Duddleston's colleague Chris Trainor said. With water levels dropping because of drought, many environmental groups are seizing the opportunity to inform residents about protecting what remains of the resource.

As plants awake from one of the driest winters on record, 2002 is unlikely to be known as the year of lush fairways or soft carpets of lawn. Pennsylvania and New Jersey have had to declare drought emergencies alarmingly early in the year. Precipitation in the last 180 days is about half of what it should be. Stream, reservoir and groundwater levels are abnormally low. Unless a monsoon is in the offing, the squeeze will continue through the summer. New Jersey would need two inches of rain a week for the next five weeks to return to comfortable levels, says Bradley M. Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.