The Delaware Estuary contributes over $10 billion annually to the region's economy, and that's a conservative estimate, according to the University of Delaware's Water Resources Agency (WRA) in the first economic impact study of the estuary in 20 years.
The estuary's watershed occupies 6,000 square miles in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, and serves more than 6.7 million people. It supplies drinking water to the fifth largest metropolitan economy in the country. And companies across the Mid-Atlantic region, from DuPont to the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, depend on its waters to sustain their business.
"By putting an economic value on ecology, we can show that the natural resources of the Delaware Estuary provide real and significant economic benefits to the tri-state region," says WRA Director Gerald Kauffman. "What's more, we can show they're worthy of investment to keep them healthy and productive."
The study, available at www.ipa.udel.edu/publications/water.html, was commissioned by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, one of 28 tidal systems named by Congress to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuary Program.
Delaware Estuary Economic Study
In the first economic impact study of the estuary in 20 years, WRA researchers measured the value of the tidal Delaware River, Delaware Bay and tributaries in three different ways and found an economic impact of:
- $10 billion through economic activity from recreation, water quality and supply, hunting and fishing, forests, agriculture and parks;
- $12 billion through the value of goods and services provided by the estuary's ecosystems (such as water filtration, flood reduction and carbon storage); and
- $10 billion through employment, including more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs with annual wages in the coastal, farm, ecotourism, water/wastewater, recreation and port industries. This does not include federal, state and local income tax benefits, which researchers expect would have increased the economic value by one-quarter to one-third.
NOTE: The three economic categories were not summed because of "overlap in values." For example, the ecosystem values of forests for water quality benefits are partially captured in the economic value of water supply.