A Delaware River advocate announced this week it sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in an effort to improve habitats for the endangered Atlantic sturgeon and other aquatic life.
The Bucks County-based Delaware Riverkeeper Network announced the suit Thursday, alleging the EPA has failed to finalize standards for dissolved oxygen in water. The nonprofit Riverkeeper organization calls those standards essential for protecting the Delaware River’s endangered population of Atlantic Sturgeon and other aquatic life. An Atlantic sturgeon is released after sampling in the St.
Marys River of Florida and Georgia. Eddie Perri/USFWS EPA officials last December announced a proposed rule to establish water quality standards relating to dissolved oxygen on 38 miles of the Delaware River, approximately from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware. Sturgeon date back 120 million years , and their ancestors were around when dinosaurs roamed the Earth 245 million years ago, according to the U.
S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Atlantic sturgeon are protected in 85 miles of the lower Delaware River as part of the species’ endangered New York Bight Distinct Population Segment.
Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper and leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said her organization sued the EPA on Wednesday, saying its dissolved oxygen standards announced last December should have been finalized in May. “While EPA appeared on track to promulgate the scientifically based dissolved oxyg.
