The Delaware Bay Oyster Restoration Project was honored with the 2008 Government Award at the 26th Annual Recognition Dinner hosted this week in Philadelphia by the Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin.

Lieutenant Colonel Gwen E. Baker of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented the award to Dr. Eric Powell, director of Rutgers University’s Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory in Port Norris, New Jersey. Powell accepted the award on behalf of the 10-member Delaware Bay Oyster Restoration Task Force, of which the USACE is also a member.

Since 2004, the Delaware Bay Oyster Restoration Project has contributed approximately $40 for every $1 invested, or roughly $168 million, to the state economies of both Delaware and New Jersey. According to estimates, that ratio may reach as high $50:$1 once harvests take place for the first time this year.

This success comes as a result of the task force’s large-scale reef enhancement program in Delaware Bay, which has increased oyster recruitment, or survival among juvenile oysters, by two fold during that same timeframe. The bi-state coalition has done this by depositing more than 1.4 million bushels of oyster and clam shells onto historic reefs, which provide oyster larvae with a clean, hard place on which they can attach, grow, and reach their full potential.

“This program is vitally important not only for the health of our state economies, but also for the health of Delaware Bay and the many species that depend on it,” said Powell. “Were it not for shell-planting activities, we might very well have lost a regional fishery to disease, habitat loss, and other factors that repeatedly decimated the population both in the 1950s and the 1990s.”

Members of the Delaware Bay Oyster Restoration Task Force include: the Cumberland County Empowerment Zone, Delaware & New Jersey Shellfish Industry, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, Delaware River and Bay Authority, Delaware River Basin Commission, Delaware State University’s College of Agriculture and Related Sciences, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Rutgers University’s Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District.

For more information, please visit the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary website.

4/18/2008