Delaware Inland Bays’ Environmental Indicators

Eleven “environmental indicators” are described in this sixteen page newspaper insert. These “indicators” are activities and conditions that illustrate whether or not the quality of the water in Delaware’s Inland Bays is improving. I came to put the insert together in a roundabout way. Our home is across the street from Killens Pond State Park in Felton, Delaware. I love the place so when John Tazelaar, a neighbor, contacted me and a few others to form a friends group for the park I joined. Our first president was Marvin Brown, my next door neighbor, and I was elected to the post the second year. One evening a young woman who worked for DNREC, the Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control agency, came to our meeting and asked if any of us would be interested in working on a “Tributary Action Team”. Once she explained what that was I decided to attend the meetings. Tributary Action Teams are a way to have people who live in a given area get involved with, and even write, pollution control strategies for their watershed. It turned out to be a difficult and time consuming but interesting activity. Soon I met other volunteers on other Delaware Trib Teams and professionals who were working on various pollution control and nature preservation projects. One of them was Ed Lewandowski with the Center For The Inland Bays, a well funded organization that studies and promotes the conservation and preservation of Delaware’s Inland Bays. Ed needed help writing and publishing the newspaper insert and hired me to do most of the writing and photography and all the design and layout.

Children's Activity Book published by the Delaware State Police Museum

I published this comic book format activity book for the DSP Museum along with a history of the state police and an activity sheet that students could use as they encountered the exhibits. The artwork was done by the comic book artist, Mike Wolfer, a Dover, Delaware resident.

Delaware's Tributary Action Teams Booklet

The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in 1972 had some very lofty goals. For example, it was to have resulted in the elimination of additional sources of water pollution by 1985 and significant restoration of the nations surface waters by 1983. When those conditions weren’t met by 1996 environmental groups sued the EPA, and won. The federal government turned to the states to come up with solutions. That made sense because no one cares more about a waterway or lake than the people who use it. Water pollution is mostly a local problem. Some states are dealing with the problem on a watershed basis. When the video and booklet I produced and published were released Delaware had four Tributary Action Teams: The Nanticoke River, the Inland Bays, the Appoquinimink River and the Murderkill River. Sharing what each was doing to develop “Pollution Control Strategies” and to improve the water quality in their watersheds was the purpose of the programs and the booklet.