Work has begun on seven grant-funded improvement projects along the entire 60-mile length of the Delaware Canal State Park, according to Delaware Canal 21.
The projects are funded by grants totaling $350,000 from The William Penn Foundation and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and are being carried out in cooperation with the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor.
They include (from South to North):
– Bristol Borough: Collaborate with the borough and other local partners to improve public access to the canal at its southern terminus.
– Morrisville and Yardley: Collaborate with both boroughs to conduct hydraulic analyses and identify measures to mitigate or eliminate canal-related flooding in these two flood-prone communities.
– Easton: Collaborate with the city to evaluate various options to provide safe and accessible pedestrian and bicycle access from downtown Easton to the head of the Delaware Canal, including a potential new ped-bike bridge over the Lehigh River.
– Leak Mitigation (entire canal): Collaborate with DCNR to research world-wide how other canals solve sink holes and other leaks that threaten waterway structural integrity, including predicting, testing monitoring and materials/procedures technologies for sustainable remedies to water losses.
– Water Quality (entire canal): Collaborate with experienced watershed organizations across the region to develop a water quality monitoring program for the Delaware Canal.
A professional team led by Simone Collins Landscape Architecture of Norristown is conducting the analyses. The work being started now is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.
