# Water Quality in the Delaware Bay :o



## Porter

Worth a gander;

Fish Consumption Bans or Advisories in Mid-Atlantic Estuaries  http://www.epa.gov/maia/html/fish_bans.html 

Water Quality in Mid-Atlantic Estuaries - Maps http://www.epa.gov/maia/html/estuaries.html


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## Porter

Monitoring for PCBs http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/PCB_info.htm 
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/PCBmtgs_press.htm 
February 12, 2001
"Three meetings are planned over the next two months to educate the public about the presence of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the tidal Delaware River and Delaware Bay and to explore ways to reduce the amount of this toxic substance."
http://www.jcaa.org/JCNL9912/9912FMLR.htm 
"On page 28 of the New Jersey Fish and Wildlife Digest ( 1999 Marine Issue) advisories on the consumption of striped bass are posted for state wide waters and in specific for Newark Bay (do not eat), the Hudson River (do not eat more then once a week), Raritan Bay (do not eat more then once a week), Northern Coastal Waters (do not eat more then once a week), the lower Delaware Bay and River (do not eat). The advisories are based on PCB, Dioxins and Chlordane Contamination."

"Similar consumption advisories have been issued by states up and down the East Coast and were mandated by the federal government several years back. The thing that amazes me is that state and federal governments issue warnings for recreational fishermen, yet allow commercial fishermen to harvest the fish and put them on the market for the general public to buy with no warnings of any kind. Talk about a set of double standards, I guess commercial fishing nets must purify the fish through some secret process unknown to the recreational fishermen."
http://www.newhopepa.com/DelawareRiver/currentissues_2.htm 
http://oaspub.epa.gov/pls/tmdl/waters_list.control?region=3&p_impairment=PCB'S 

Delaware River Basin Commission http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/ 

Pollution!


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## Porter

Index of Watershed Indicators National Maps http://www.epa.gov/wateratlas/geo/maplist.html 

U.S. Map: Fish Consumption Advisories http://www.epa.gov/iwi/1999sept/iv2_usmap.html


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## BigJeff823

Places around the Chesepeake Bay and tribs aint much better somtimes.I'm not sure if I would want to eat Catfish from the Potomac;you can only eat 2 meals of Catfish per mounth.I wonder if pollution is responsible for things like Phistreria which we had alot of 2-3 years ago.and the Menhaden


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## BigJeff823

I hope other spices of fish I eat from the Deleware Bay are ok.


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## HuskyMD

I'm not sure I'd eat anything from the potomac--unless it was the southernmost part of it.

With all the crap from the chicken farms up north leaking into the river...


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## Manayunk Jake

Greetings All!

Sad part is, the Delaware Bay water quality will get a lot worse when they start dredging that extra five feet in the shipping channel. That's 70 years of sediments, which includes all the chemcals dumped into the river by Allied Chemical, Rohm & Haas, Sun Oil, and a hundred smaller chemical/petroleum companies between 1950 through 1970 (aside from what was illegally dumped.) All in the name of progress....


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## BigJeff823

Undernath Aberdeen Proving grounds is just as contaminated.They're trying to clean up chemical waste that was left over from the WW2 times underneath the ground.They said it would take up to 50 years to clean up.Its good that they're trying to do somthing about it.We got alot of sewage treatment plants around here too,and every once in a wile I hear about untreated sewage polluting the Potomac.It hasn't been happining too mutch,but we need to keep on top of things like this and let the people in the state goverments know about it.If we do that hopefully our kids will have someplace to fish  .


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## HuskyMD

Well, the potomac is certainly improving. A coworker who grew up swimming in the potomac years ago tells me of how he would be covered in yellow soot after swimming.


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## Porter

Truly a sad state of affairs. It appears that most waters are improving, but we are a long way off. Ironically, even today there are companies attempting to increase their effluent discharges. As you all know, in the end it's all about $$$. 

The Potomac appears to be struggling too. http://www.savethesturgeon.com/WashConsProject/WashConsProject.html 


*** These are the fish consumption guidelines for New Jersey 2003. ***
(Interesting chart where you can "Pick your risk", what a thought.  ) http://www.nj.gov/dep/dsr/pcb-dioxin-chart.htm 
http://www.nj.gov/dep/dsr/njmainfish.htm 


Maybe I can't eat 'em, but that won't stop me from catchin' 'em.


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## HuskyMD

Interesting link on the sturgeon.


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## TomL

Bad water quality and fish consumption advisories are something I feel like we will be dealing with for a long time. 50 years ago the problem was industrial pollution. Now that is tightly regulated, but a real big problem is non-point-source pollution. This is basically runoff. 

We have cleaned up the industrial plants, but we now have to somehow cleanup all the runoff from agriculture, roads, etc. Just imagine how much junk drips out of all our cars and eventually makes its way into the water.


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## Eric G

Here's the scoop on the fish advisories: to test for contaminates the fish is grind up head to tail, then sample taken.

Who eats the whole fish completely? Most filet, skin it and cut out the fatty dark meat. Thus your lessening the consumption of contaimants.

Very similar lesson learned, for example the NMFS trawl study where a private commercial trawl was done side by side. The commerical trawl came up with tons of fish while the so-called experts at NMFS trawl hardly came up with nothing.

Another point, the Demorcats in charge in NJ used the new fish advisories as yet another slam on ex-Governor Whitman. She withheld them due to the sampling methods were questionable.

What comes around goes around...

I continue to eat fish but also like a nice thick t-bone once in a while


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