Delaware estuary now under pressure from Trump administration

Credit: (Delaware River Basin Commission)

On June 11, all four states represented by the Delaware River Basin Commission approved a plan by the agency’s federal member, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to end any future funding for programs on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and climate change.

For the Trump administration’s critics, the resolution was the latest sign of the shifting role of the federal government in the watershed’s management and the Trump administration’s push to promote fossil fuels, dismantling environmental protection, and attempting to deny climate change.

That the Army Corps, as a part of the Trump administration, should propose such a cut is less surprising than the unanimous agreement of the states — New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware — to a plan that would fuel the federal government’s attacks on science in the Delaware River’s urban estuary and beyond.

“It was an appalling capitulation to the Trump Administration’s attempts to wipe out diversity, equity, and inclusion and to ignore the crisis we are all experiencing, including in the watershed, with climate change impacts,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental nonprofit.

“Not only is it impossible to ignore the reality that our overburdened communities are suffering from environmental racism that must be corrected through actions and policies by the states and independent agencies like DRBC, it is ludicrous to pretend there isn’t a climate crisis that must be addressed,” Carluccio said.

The resolution said: “In recognition of policies of the current federal administration, from this point forward and for as long as these policies remain in effect, federal funds awarded hereafter to the Commission through the United States Army Corps of Engineers shall not be used directly or indirectly to support programs or policies that advance the principles of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or the concept of ‘climate change.’”

New political reality

The Delaware River Basin Commission is facing a new political reality since NJ Spotlight News explored the threats and promises of the watershed and its ecosystem in its “Water’s Edge” project in 2023.

At the time, the river’s urban estuary especially — running from Cape May to Trenton — faced profound threats both natural and human-caused, yet progress in addressing them was also evident. Now programs underpinning that progress are threatened by an administration in Washington seemingly bent on gutting such programs.

The commission’s vote for the federal funding cut earlier this month was the latest example of the threats. The vote came as somewhat of a surprise, as it was not on the meeting agenda ahead of time, fueling suspicions that the commission was seeking to hide the vote from public view.

“No agency should hide the proverbial football by having a resolution that is not publicly available ahead of the meeting,” said Doug O’Malley, director of the nonprofit Environment New Jersey, who attended the meeting. “There was no detail given until the actual vote occurred.”

Beth Brown, a spokeswoman for the commission, declined to say what the withdrawal of federal funding would mean for the agency’s policies on DEI and climate change, but she said the commissioners’ vote will mean the Army Corps continues to cooperate with the commission’s management of the region’s water resources.

“The action taken by the Commission at its June 11, 2025, business meeting will ensure that the commission can continue to provide trusted, effective, and coordinated management of the Basin’s shared water resources with the full participation of the United States,” Brown said in a statement.

The resolution does not affect other sources of federal grant funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, she said.

Credit: (James Douglas/NJDEP)

The federal spending cut cited by the resolution is “limited to potential future funding provided through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” Brown said. She noted that the federal government paid its scheduled yearly dues of $715,000 to the commission for both the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years but not for fiscal year 2025, which ends on June 30. For fiscal year 2026, the federal dues are “not guaranteed” and will depend on the passage of a federal budget, Brown said.

“If DRBC does not receive federal signatory funding for FY 2026, the Commission can seek other sources of support, such as competitive grants, that align with its mission of managing, protecting and improving the shared water resources of the Delaware River Basin,” she said.

Climate change

In 2019, the commission set up the Advisory Committee on Climate Change to identify “potentially significant” impacts on the basin from climate change-related impacts such as salinity from sea-level rise in the Delaware River’s tidal section, and impacts to stream flow because of changes in precipitation. The committee’s 18 members include appointees by the DRBC’s executive director, water company executives and academics.

Since 1996, the federal government has contributed to the DRBC’s approximately $8 million annual budget only three times: that year, plus in 2023 and 2024. Its accumulated shortfall is $17.1 million since agreeing in 1988 to pay 20% of the agency’s annual running costs, commission data shows.

Some funding that was initially cut from groups that work on the estuary has now been restored but other sources have been irrevocably lost, forcing those groups to cut their environmental work.

The Delaware River Basin Commission, which oversees water quality and supply in the basin, represents the water interests of its four member states, plus the federal government. It was set up by the administration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

In Trenton, a statement from the office of Gov. Phil Murphy did not say why his representative on the commission voted for the funding cut, but said it would only apply to Army Corps funding for DEI and climate programs.

“The prohibition on ‘directly or indirectly’ using funds awarded by the US Army Corps for DEI/Climate projects is specifically limited to US Army Corps funds,” and does not affect any funding for those programs from New Jersey or other states, the statement said.

Pressure from Congress

Pressure on the DRBC and its management of water resources in the Delaware River Basin is also coming from Congress, where U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a new Republican member for part of northeast Pennsylvania, sponsored a bill calling for a federal review of the commission and two other mid-Atlantic river basin commissions.

The bill, introduced on May 15, would require the U.S. Comptroller General to investigate the ethics, practices and funding of each commission, and recommend any reforms.

Bresnahan’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the reasons for the bill. Carluccio of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network called the measure an effort to disempower an agency that protects the public, rather than any attempt to uncover waste and fraud.

“This is a thinly veiled attempt to probe the DRBC and the other two commissions to find out how to bring them into compliance with the dysfunctional systems the Department of Government Efficiency is creating with its destructive actions,” she said, referring to the controversial agency set up by President Donald Trump to reduce government spending and jobs, and initially led by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

Critics of the Trump administration’s actions in the Delaware River estuary also cite a last-minute order by the U.S. Department of Energy to keep an aging power plant at Eddystone near Philadelphia running beyond its scheduled retirement on the grounds that its power is needed to meet higher summer demand. The plant, built in the 1960s, generates electricity using oil and gas, and therefore contributes to the atmospheric warming that helps to boost demand.

The plant had been scheduled to close permanently on May 31 but was directed by the DOE only one day before to continue providing power to the grid at times of peak demand for at least 90 days. The plant’s owner, Constellation Energy Corp., said it had decided to close the plant for economic reasons after an earlier determination by the grid operator PJM Interconnection that a shutdown would not hurt grid reliability. But after the DOE order, Constellation said it would retain the staff needed to continue operations safely and reliably.

Liquefied natural gas

Further evidence of the administration’s promotion of fossil fuels in the urban estuary, critics say, is the recent advocacy for a proposed export terminal for liquefied natural gas on the Delaware River near Philadelphia by the new Republican U.S. senator for Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick. The senator, who was endorsed by then-candidate Trump in the campaign, narrowly defeated Bob Casey, a three-term Democrat, in 2024.

In March, McCormick met with Franc James, chief executive of Penn America Energy Holdings, which plans to build the $7 billion terminal, which would also be at Eddystone, Pa.

“This massive, proposed project in southeastern Pennsylvania has the potential to generate billions in economic impact over the next 20 years, create 3,000 good-paying jobs, and produce $30-$40 million per year in tax revenue for this community,” McCormick said in a statement on his website. His office did not respond to a request for further comment for this story.

‘The impacts of fracking on watersheds are indisputable. Landmark protections require eternal vigilance, and clearly the industry is still looking to drill in the watershed.’ — Doug O’Malley, director, Environment New Jersey

In early June, James met officials at the White House to “provide intelligence” about the project, Reuters reported on June 5.

Across the river in Gibbstown, New Jersey, another proposed LNG export terminal awaits a decision from the DRBC on whether to extend a construction permit for another three years. That project looked doomed after the Biden administration withdrew a permit that would have allowed the transportation of LNG to Gibbstown by rail. But the new permit application seems to show that the developer, Delaware River Partners, still wants to build the terminal.

Credit: (NJDEP)

At the same site beside the Delaware River, the company also plans to build giant caverns to store liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) including butane and propane produced by the natural gas industry active in Pennsylvania’s giant Marcellus Shale, one of the world’s biggest natural gas formations. New Jersey regulators issued a draft approval for the project and are expected to issue a final decision in coming months after a public comment period that ended on June 16.

Federal funding cuts

At a grassroots level, work to protect the river and its urban estuary as far upstream as Trenton has been hurt by millions of dollars in recent direct and indirect federal funding cuts, according to the leader of one nonprofit who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears that any public criticism of funding cuts would provoke retaliation from the Trump administration.

Some funding that was initially cut from groups that work on the estuary has now been restored but other sources have been irrevocably lost, forcing those groups to cut their environmental work. Under the Trump administration, federal agencies including the EPA, Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have lost many long-time employees, and with them institutional knowledge that is hard to replace, the source said.

While many of those employees have left voluntarily, others may still be laid off, fueling fears that even if certain federal grants survive the bloodletting, there won’t be anyone left at some agencies to hand out the money.

Still, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to continue its funding for the congressionally mandated Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund, and expects to announce grantees in August or September. “We are moving forward with our grant cycle as planned for this fiscal year,” said FWS spokeswoman Bridget MacDonald.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say the DRBC’s hard-fought ban on fracking for natural gas in the Delaware Basin is under pressure from both state and federal Republican lawmakers, including Pennsylvania’s Bresnahan, and perhaps from the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin.

The fracking ban, finalized in 2021 after being unofficially in place for about a decade, was a landmark decision that protects the Delaware watershed from an industry that could otherwise contaminate aquifers supplying drinking water to some 13 million people, said O’Malley of Environment New Jersey.

The Trump administration has not made its intentions clear on the future of fracking in the watershed. But any lifting of the ban would be consistent with the administration’s support for fossil fuels, he said.

“No one, including the federal government, gets to wave a wand and reverse decisions by the DRBC,” O’Malley said. “The impacts of fracking on watersheds are indisputable. Landmark protections require eternal vigilance, and clearly the industry is still looking to drill in the watershed.”