Living Lands & Waters, Philadelphia Water Department, Partnership for Delaware Estuary and over 230 volunteers collected 16+ tons of trash along the Delaware in 20 cleanups from August 20 to September 2 (link)
Photo shows volunteers headin g out to one of the cleanup sites. Click the image to see Flickr photos from the cleanups.
Great job, thanks to all who participated and organized this effort.
I have been assembling a bibliography of marine litter – microplastic research and wanted to give a short update on my findings to date. My current microplastic bibliography is available here.
Springer has just released a 460 page open source book (link) on Marine Anthropogenic Litter which covers the entire marine – freshwater microplastic research field very well.
This book provides up-to-date information by the leading microplastic researchers. Microplastic ingestion has been observed and documented in hundreds of marine species.
More recently, elevated microplastics levels have been found in the Great Lakes, North Shore Channel, Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay, so there is reason to be concerned about expect elevated levels in the Schuylkill – Delaware Rivers.
Sewage treatment plants have been identified as one source of microplastic discharge. Researchers have sampled for microplastics in the Chicago area North Shore Channel, upstream and downstream of Chicago area’s Terrence J O‘Brien Water Reclamation Plant and have found elevated levels of microplastics downstream of the plant discharge.
Table 1 of the paper is reproduced below:
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This Chicago activated sludge treatment plant discharges very high levels of microplastic fibers and fragments with values considerably higher than those found in the Great Lakes and N Pacific, as shown in Figure 1 from the paper.
If follow-up studies confirm the North Shore Channel and TJ O’Brien plant microplastic discharge levels, then urban rivers and municipal treatment plant discharges will be identified as potential significant sources of marine microplastics.
Microplastics in the marine environment has been well researched. Work on microplastics in freshwater is just beginning. The role of wastewater treatment plants and stormwater runoff will be important focus of upcoming research.
Philadelphia is in a particularly difficult situation. Downstream of large – developed basins, Philadelphia’s Schuylkill and Delaware River water supply intakes likely see elevated microplastics levels and the City’s 3 wastewater treatment plants and stormwater runoff likely contribute microplastics to the Delaware Estuary and Bay.
We know microplastics present a serious challenge to the marine environment, recent freshwater research is showing that microplastics are also a freshwater challenge. Clearly we need a research program focused on microplastics in the Schuylkill – Delaware Rivers.
We have a serious plastic stormwater trash problem that is hurting our local creeks, Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers as well as the Atlantic Ocean. This photo gallery shows my 10/13/14 trash survey along the West Deptford, NJ Delaware River bank. (PDF here)
Pennsylvania and New Jersey litter gets washed into local creeks during rain storms and makes its way down stream to the Delaware where it gets moved around by wind and tide. Some gets caught on W Deptford’s river shoreline.
Here is a link to an excellent 10/5/14 Courier-Post article on trash along the Delaware Riverfront (link).
I have been surveying stormwater plastic trash along the banks of Philadelphia area creeks and rivers to assess the impact of Philadelphia’s street litter on our receiving waters. My overall survey plan is shown in this map:
This post reports on photo surveys of site 4 (General Pulaski Park) and site 5 (Penn Treaty Park).
General Pulaski Park, with its very limited river front, has stormwater trash in the southeast corner of the Park along the river front, as shown in this photo.
Penn Treaty Park is a 9.7 acre waterfront park with nearly 1,100 feet of accessible river front that can be viewed during low tide.
