Friends Of The Wissahickon Awarded $780,000 To Improve Wissahickon Creek Water Quality

Merck & Co., Inc. has awarded the Friends of the Wissahickon $780,656 for their Wissahickon Stormwater Mitigation and Sediment Reduction Project.

This two-year project, in partnership with the Natural Resources staff of the Fairmount Park Commission, will reduce sediment and improve water quality, protect drinking water sources, and enhance the Wissahickon watershed habitat.

“These funds will go a long way toward mitigating one of the most severe impacts in the Wissahickon Creek--erosion and sedimentation,” says Maura McCarthy, FOW Executive Director. Erosion and sedimentation were named as one of the most compromising factors of the lower Wissahickon watershed in the Total Maximum Daily Load report issued in 2003 by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

This project will be undertaken in connection with the settlement of an enforcement action, United States & PADEP v. Defendant Merck & Co., Inc. In 2007, the company agreed to a $20 million settlement and to fund projects dealing with stream restoration, sediment reduction, habitat restoration, or wetlands restoration.

Merck’s funding of the Wissahickon Stormwater Mitigation and Sediment Reduction Project will make a meaningful impact on sedimentation and water quality in a way that directly improves watershed habitat within the community most directly affected by the 2006 spill that resulted in the enforcement action.

The project will reclaim five severe erosion sites on the west side of the gorge in Wissahickon Valley Park. Oversight of the restoration will be shared by FOW and FPC’s Natural Resources staff. The five sites selected for remediation in this project include stormwater gullies and degraded trail corridors. All the sites in this project carry substantial stormwater volume and sedimentation into the Wissahickon Creek, damaging the riparian and upland habitats in the watershed.